


Gravity Falls: Once More

by AbsoluteRift



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Action/Adventure, Aged-Up Character(s), Drama, F/M, Family, Friendship, Gen, Humor, It's Like a Sequel Series, Mystery, Post-Series, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-02-19 02:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 37
Words: 391,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13114383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbsoluteRift/pseuds/AbsoluteRift
Summary: Four years after their life-changing summer of mystery and adventure, Dipper and Mabel Pines return to spend their second summer in the legendary town of Gravity Falls. Now 16 years old, there's a whole new set of mysteries to solve and adventures to go on. With allies and threats, both old and new, the Pines twins must prepare themselves for whatever awaits them.





	1. Prologue: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. This a repost of my fic over from Fanfiction.NET. I kind of posted all of the chapters all at once, so pardon the extreme length for such seemingly little reception/response.
> 
> Just wanted to clear this up. Further notes about the fic itself at the end of this chapter.

_[Four years prior]_

_[September 2012; First Day of School]_

* * *

 

"Let's go Dipper, we're going to be late!"

Mabel Pines shouted ecstatically at the top of the steps of the school building. Summer had just ended the day before, when she and her brother, Dipper Pines, returned from their faithful summer at the one and only Gravity Falls.

To both of them, it had been a huge mixture of bizarre, crazy, weird, and absolute madness. Although within that mixture, there had also been much fun, thrill, and overall excitement, despite the most disastrous events. They fought gnomes, zombies, a shape-shifting monster, lumberjack ghosts, unicorns, and a dream demon which nearly brought the end of the world.

Dipper and Mabel Pines had gotten through it all. Not alone, of course. That summer was originally planned as a normal summer to stay with their Great Uncle Stanley Pines, although they normally call him their Grunkle Stan. From the moment Dipper found the journal in the middle of the woods, he had a feeling Gravity Falls was not what he expected it to be. Things had changed most after the return of Stan's twin brother, Stanford Pines. From that point, the summer was heading in multiple different directions that eventually led to one eventual outcome: Weirdmageddon.

This was the summer's highest and riskiest point. Especially for Dipper, who had struggled through a good portion of the event on his own, with his sister encased in her own world, and one of his Great Uncles turned to gold. It was a rough time. But by the end of it all, they had made it. When all hope and seemed lost, they survived and made it through with no major loss. And the most important thing that Weirdmageddon had done was make them stronger. That if two twelve-year-olds, almost thirteen, could survive the apocalypse, then they could survive just about anything.

Dipper Pines, however, struggled to simply walk up the main stairs of the school as he carried an overloaded backpack that tugged down on his spine and a stack of textbooks in his arms. This was the hardest thing he had done since Weirdmageddon.

About a week prior to the summer's end, Dipper and Mabel's parents had gone to their school's open house night to retrieve information on the twin's classes and school supplies. Mabel had it easy, only needing to carry her fairly light and brightly decorated backpack, as to fit her style. Dipper, having been signed for a bunch of more advanced courses, didn't have it as easy. He basically had a textbook and a binder for just about every single class and it weighed him down hard. He didn't mind so much having to have what's needed for his class, but it had become an immediate realization that fighting off an apocalypse didn't prepare him for having to carry a stack of 8 textbooks.

He continued to struggle climbing up the steps. His back was in pain and he needed to take a break, but he kept pushing himself upwards. Eventually, he started to break a sweat and just couldn't keep going. He collapsed down to his knee and dropped half of his textbooks on the ground.

He looked up at Mabel, who was just standing at the top of the stairs looking down at him with her arms crossed.

"Hey, since your arms are empty, care to lend a hand?" Dipper asked through his panting.

Mabel groaned while throwing her arms in the air. She proceeded back down the stairs. "Why do you smart people have to go and take the super smarty pants courses? Why can't you be like me and just be in regular classes?" She asked while picking up Dipper's dropped textbooks. "With that big head of yours, it's not like you'd fail."

Dipper got up from his knee and continued walking up with steps, with Mabel following. "Well, regular classes don't give high school or college credit, so I think I'll just stick with what I got. A few textbooks aren't gonna stop me." He said.

"Ha, tell that to the stairs." Mabel chuckled.

"Yeah, well, it's just something I gotta get used to. If I have to carry this bag and these textbooks up these stairs every day just to get some college credit, then so be it."

As the two finally reached the top of the steps, they can hear the school bell ringing throughout the area.

"Hmm, I wonder if they still hand out college credit to people who're late," Mabel says with a slight grin.

"C'mon, it's the first day. I doubt they'll do anything," Dipper said, as he changed the position of his arms holding the books to open the door. The two walk through, leaving the door to shut behind them.

"Oh really? These advanced classes don't have  _advanced_  expectations for nerds like you?" Mabel teases, Dipper rolling his eyes in response.

The two walked through the halls of the school until they reached the main locker halls. The plan was to head to Dipper's locker to store his textbooks and then they'd both go on their way to their first hour. Since the first bell already rang, the halls were barren at that moment.

"231, 232, 233…ah, here we go. Locker 234!" Dipper read aloud. He sets his textbooks down on the floor so he has access to the lock itself.

He popped the locker open and the two put Dipper's stack of textbooks inside his locker, barely managing to fit them all inside. Dipper closes his locker, letting in a deep breath and exhaling loudly, expressing his exhaustion from the whole process.

"Man, that was tiring. But it's done," he says, then turns to his sister, "Thanks for the help."

"Don't mention it. I'm always here to be the muscle to your fragile, little bones." She teased while laughing at her own wit.

Dipper didn't appear amused though. Instead, he just grabbed his bag from the ground and straightened the lumberjack hat he wore on his head before proceeding to walk down the hall. Mabel's smug look slowly faded into one of concern.

"Dipper?" she called out to him as she quickly caught up to him in the hall. He turned to look at her as she continued to walk right next to him. "C'mon, I was only joking."

"Huh?" he asked in confusion. But then he immediately processed and understood what she had meant after. "Oh. No, that's not…I'm fine. Just a bit anxious is all."

"Anxious about what?" Mabel asked, walking in front of him as they climbed up a stairway.

"I don't know. Just being here again, I guess," Dipper said with dismay, placing his hands in his pockets as he continued walking up the stairs. "Maybe I got a bit too comfortable back in Gravity Falls. Just not sure if I'll be able to readapt to the school environment again."

"I know how you feel," Mabel said with empathy. "This morning, I couldn't stand leaving Waddles back home by himself. So, I didn't!"

At that moment, Waddles' head popped out of Mabel's backpack while she was in front of Dipper on the stairs and oinked right in his face, surprising him.

He stood shocked on a single step. "You brought Waddles to school in your backpack? Mabel, are you crazy?"

"C'mon Dipper, it's not like I didn't leave it open for him to breathe," Mabel explained, rolling her eyes as she reached the top of the stairs. "Plus, I didn't bring any of my other supplies so it's not like he didn't have room either."

"Mabel, that's not the..." Dipper stopped, facepalming before continuing to follow her upstairs. "You know what, I'll let you deal with that. I didn't know about any of this."

"Whatever you say," Mabel said dismissively as she pet Waddles in her bag, waiting at the top of the stairs for Dipper. "Anyways, you shouldn't be anxious about school, Dipper. We've faced so much worse this summer. I'm sure whatever school throws at you will be nothing compared to a demon triangle or an evil, creepy child. Trust me Dipper, you got this!  _We_  got this!"

Dipper caught up with her at the top and smiled, "You're right. What do we have to worry about? A couple of As instead of A-pluses are nothing compared to the threats like Gideon or Bill used to be."

"Yeah, quite the comparison you made," Mabel said, rolling her eyes at what Dipper considers a threat in school.

"And at the very least, we have homeroom together," Dipper said. "So we can't say we don't have any classes with each other this year. Unlike last year."

"Yep!" Mabel said eagerly. "The great room 324."

"Actually, it's room 325," Dipper corrected.

"No, I'm sure it's 324," Mabel argued.

"Well, I'm sure it's 325," Dipper reiterated. "I reviewed my schedule this morning. I'm positive about it."

"So did I," Mabel said. "And it said 324."

Dipper dug into his pocket, taking out a folded piece of paper. He unfolded the piece of paper and turned the front toward Mabel, pointing his finger at 'Room 325' on his schedule. "See? Room 325. Mr. Thomas."

"What?" Mabel asked in disbelief. "But mine said 324, Ms. Rady. I didn't have Mr. Thomas."

The two then noticed two doors right beside them. They had both had their own sign next to them. The left door was Room 324, Ms. Rady. The right door was Room 325, Mr. Thomas.

Dipper stared at the two signs, eyes narrowing in annoyance. "You've got to be kidding me."

"So we  _don't_  have homeroom together?" Mabel asked disappointedly.

"I guess not. Which means just like last year, we don't have any classes together," Dipper says, also disappointed with the whole situation.

"Well, I mean, we still have lunch together," Mabel reminds him. "At least there's that. We could hang out then. I'm going to make some new friends by talking about all the adventures we went on this summer and I bet it's probably not gonna be easy to convince them. You could help back me up later!"

"I mean, I guess that's better than nothing," Dipper says, smiling slightly, "Lunch it is then."

"Yep!" Mabel agreed joyfully while playfully punching Dipper in the arm. She then flipped the top of her backpack back over Waddles' head. "Alright, Waddles. I gotta hide you again."

Waddles oinked before unexpectedly jumping out of her bag and running through the halls. "Waddles!" Mabel shouted as Waddles continued running. "Aw man, mom and dad are gonna kill me if they find out about this. They already don't like me bringing Waddles home in the first place!"

"Well, you better catch him before any of teachers or administrators do," Dipper reminded.

"Argh!" Mabel groaned. She dropped her bag and quickly ran after Waddles. "Come back, Waddles!"

Dipper watched her run off, shaking his head at the fact that his sister brought Waddles to school in the first place. He turned toward the door of Room 325 and took a deep breath. He opened the door to the room and walked inside with a confident smile.

"Hey, it's Dipstick!" a voice called out, immediately wiping the smile right off of Dipper's face. The announcement brought the eyes of everyone else in the class his way.

In the middle of the classroom sat a boy wearing a familiar black shirt that read 'STRAIGHT FEAR', with a bulldog's face placed right in the center. It was Trevor, Dipper's childhood bully. Trevor tormented and picked on Dipper constantly when they were younger. It wasn't until he moved away at the end of the fourth grade to another school in Berkeley, which now seems to only have been a temporary break from said torment. Seeing him again after all this time replaced Dipper's confidence with pure horror.

"Dipstick! What's going on, buddy?" Trevor called out. "You're like ten minutes late, bro. I thought you cared about perfect attendance?"

Some laughs were heard around the classroom. Others just smirked and others just dismissed the entire situation. A boy in a dark navy hoodie that sat in the back of the classroom angrily eyeballed Trevor. Dipper was frozen in place, still horrified and distraught at Trevor's unexpected return.

"That's enough, young man," the teacher, presumably Mr. Thomas, called out to Trevor as he stood from his desk. Trevor noticeably snickered as he sat back in his chair. The teacher directed his focus toward Dipper. "And what is your name?"

Dipper shook his head quickly, breaking from his horrified trance so he could address the teacher. "Um, Dipper Pines, sir."

The teacher looked down at his clipboard and flipped through it. He raised an eyebrow before glancing back at Dipper. "I don't have a Dipper Pines on my roster, but I have a Mas-"

"YES!" Dipper loudly and swiftly responded, cutting the teacher off before he could finish announcing his real name to everyone, also grabbing the attention of everyone else in the class once more. Part of being late on the first day meant that he couldn't go through the ritual of personally clarifying his nickname to the teacher ahead of time. With everyone's attention directed toward him once again, he cleared his throat and calmly responded. "Yes, that's me. Just call me Dipper, please."

The teacher stared at Dipper in continued shock for a moment before writing on his clipboard. "Alright,  _Dipper_  Pines. Please sit down in that empty seat in the fourth row," he said, pointing out to an empty spot placed in between a bunch of students that Dipper didn't recognize.

Dipper quickly sat in the specified seat, folding his hands. He hoped to just squeeze in without directing any more attention to himself.

"Anyways, I believe we've waited long enough," the teacher said, placing his glasses down on his desk. "My name is Mr. Thomas and I'll be your homeroom teacher this school year."

Dipper listened to Mr. Thomas giving his introduction talk, sitting quietly in his chair like everyone else in the class. He tried to relax after tensing up from his 'grand entrance'. He looked around the classroom, noticing the variety in student behavior that sat in the class. While some students were paying attention to Mr. Thomas, others were either asleep, falling asleep, or generally paying attention elsewhere.

As Mr. Thomas kept giving his introduction, Dipper felt something hit the back of his head. He placed his hand back, finding a piece of wadded up paper that was shot in the back of his head. He turned around and spotted Trevor a few seats back in the row beside him, but he appeared as if he wasn't even paying attention to him. Dipper narrowed his eyes before turning forward again.

Within a few seconds, Dipper was shot by another spit wad. He turned toward Trevor once again, and he looked the exact same way. Dipper looked at the other students behind him, but none looked suspicious or expectable enough as Trevor was. He looked forward again, and as expected, more spit wads were shot right at him. This time, Dipper didn't turn around. He took several hits over a course of a few seconds until he quickly turned around to finally catch Trevor in the act. But he didn't hide, proceeding to shoot a spit wad directly at Dipper's face. He laughed loudly at his success, while Dipper remained visibly unamused and annoyed by the whole ordeal.

Trevor's outburst caught the attention of Mr. Thomas, however, and was promptly approached by him. He silently put his hand out to him, clearly asking for him to hand the straw over, which he did. Mr. Thomas continued his introduction as he walked over to a trashcan to throw the straw away. Dipper wiped off all the spit wads that he had taken to the back of the head and face, letting out a sigh of relief now that the situation was concluded.

However, within a few moments, he felt another spit wad hit the back of his head. Surprised, he turned around and noticed that Trevor had another straw on him. Fed up but exhausted by the issue, Dipper turned forward with an annoyed look on his face and simply took every next shot that Trevor had at him without looking back again or doing anything about it, wishing to cause no further commotion or interruption that would bring more attention toward him. So he simply let Trevor have this win.

In the back of the classroom, however, continued to watch the boy in the dark navy hoodie, who continued to angrily eyeball Trevor's actions against Dipper. He narrowed his eyes even further, putting complete emphasis on his visible frustration.

* * *

The bell rang, indicating the end of the first class period and the start of an early lunch period. Students began pouring out of each classroom, making their way toward the cafeteria. Dipper walked out of Mr. Thomas' class brushing off all the spit wads that covered the back of his head and hat. He thought it was a miracle that he managed to escape first period alive with a need for nothing but a shower to wash off any remains of Trevor's saliva on the back of his head.

After brushing his lumberjack hat clean, he placed it back on his head. Remembering his deal with Mabel to meet up at lunch, he looked among the nearby crowd of students walking down the halls for her, considering that she was right next door to his first class. Unable to find her anywhere in the halls, he had to search around the cafeteria when he got there.

Eventually, he found her sat at a table with another group of girls, talking and laughing away. He sighed and approached the girls.

"And just when we thought we were going to fall to our death, I pulled out my grappling hook and saved us at the last second," Mabel told the girls.

"Wow!" a blonde girl with very large glasses exclaimed.

"So cool!" a black haired girl agreed.

"And what happened to the evil demon child?" the blonde girl asked as Dipper walked up right behind Mabel.

"Oh, don't worry. He lived," Mabel replied. "Fun fact: apparently you can be inside a giant exploding robot falling down a cliff and survive mostly unscathed! But he went to jail. But that wasn't the last time we heard from the evil demon child."

"Evil demon child?" Dipper intervened, grabbing the attention of all the girls. "I guess that's one way to describe, Gideon."

"Dipper!" Mabel exclaimed joyfully. "Girls, this is my brother. He's the one who was with me during all the adventures we went on."

"Woah," the girls said in awe.

"Dipper, these are my new friends!" she explained. "Sammy, Angela, and Gretchen!" she pointed out.

"Is it true you punched a child in the face?" Sammy, the blonde girl with glasses, promptly asked.

"Um, I mean, yeah. I guess," Dipper answered, somewhat unsure of how to answer. "Just to clarify, this was a child that nearly cut me in half with a giant pair of scissors and tried to kill me and Mabel several other times, so I think it evens things out."

"Don't worry, Dipper," Mabel cut in. "I already told them everything about Gideon. They know what a butthead he was. In fact, they actually believe me about all the adventures we went on!"

"Oh, cool," Dipper said. "By the way, what happened with Waddles?"

"Well, he was caught by an administrator," she explained. "But I lured him back with a candy bar that mom and dad packed me for lunch when the admins weren't looking. Now I think they're going crazy thinking there's a loose pig in the school."

At that moment, they turn their heads behind them to see a man placing a 'Lost Pig' sign on a wall. The man quickly glances around before sprinting off.

"Haha, that's the man who was in charge of watching him," Mabel chuckled. She opened the flap of her bag, revealing Waddles to be safe and secure in her bag. "But he's safe and sound with me. I'm not gonna let him go running around again. You hear that you bad pig?" Waddles oinked in response. Mabel smiled, hugging her bag. "Aw, I can't stay mad at you."

"Well that's great that you got him back," Dipper said. He looked around at the table, noticing no empty seats. "So is there a place I can sit? Maybe move to another table or something?"

"I don't think there's any room any place else," Angela, the black haired girl, answered. "I mean, we barely managed to grab this table when it was empty."

"Yeah, Dipper," Mabel agreed, sadly, "I'm not sure you'll be able to sit with us."

"But, you said we'd hang out at lunch!" Dipper said, somewhat irritated. "Where else am I going to go?"

"I know! I know!" Mabel stated, clearly expressing guilt. "But I just met these girls and I really want to hang out with them. They're so cool!"

"I can scoot over for you, Dipper," Gretchen, a redhead girl with pigtails who also wore pretty sizable headgear, dreamily offered.

Flattered, yet very much uninterested, Dipper took a step back, "Actually, I'll find somewhere else to sit. Thanks for living up to our deal, Mabel," he said bitterly before storming off.

"What's his problem?" Angela asked.

"Doesn't he have his own friends?" Sammy asked.

Mabel sighed. "You see, Dipper's not exactly the king of being social. He tends to scare others with his nerdiness. Even other nerds are scared of him!"

"He's also terrible socially?" Gretchen sputtered through her headgear. She sighed dreamily. "We'd be perfect for each other."

"You two probably would," Mabel agreed cheerfully, "Speaking of being perfect for each other, who wants to hear the story about me having my first kiss with a merman?"

"I do!" the three other girls said in unison.

* * *

Outside on the school's deck, Dipper bitterly sat by himself on a bench. Dipper acknowledged the fact that he didn't have any real friends in Piedmont. It never really disturbed him or impacted him that much. He's been used to it. He's tried making friends many times before, but being accepted for who he was in school was never as easy as it was in Gravity Falls.

Though it occurs to him while he's eating his sandwich that he has developed much better social skills after the summer. Before the summer started, simple eye contact with anyone he didn't know was an issue. But after everything he's come to learn and all the people he's interacted with in Gravity Falls, maybe things would be different this year.

"Hey, Dipstick!" a voice called out, grabbing Dipper's attention. He looked up and saw Trevor, accompanied by two of his goons. He sat beside Dipper on the bench and put his arm around him. "You look so lonely over here, man. Like you could use a friend. And we both know you've never been a man who could make friends."

Dipper pushed Trevor's arm off him and got up from the bench, standing defensively across from him. "What do you want from me, Trevor?"

"I've treated you like garbage for so long, Dipstick," Trevor responded, getting up from the bench as well. "Now that I'm back from Berkeley, I was thinking we could put that all behind us and become the best of friends. All you gotta is do is give me your lunch money."

"Well I'm going to have to politely decline your offer," Dipper responded sarcastically. "I brought lunch, therefore, I have no lunch money on me."

"Well I guess there are other ways we can become friends," Trevor replied with a smirk.

He snapped his fingers, prompting one of his goons standing behind Dipper to push him down in front of him. Caught off guard by the goon, Dipper came plummeting to the ground, his face bashing against the concrete. While Dipper groaned in pain, Trevor crouched down and snatched the lumberjack hat off his head. Dipper looked up at him, the side of his face scratched up.

Looking around, Dipper can see that Trevor is causing a commotion, and other students begin to circle around the two. He can see people getting ready for the upcoming action. People are even pushing others out of the way to get a better look. Some guy in a dark navy hoodie emerges closer to the front of the crowd too.

"I heard your sister came back to school with a pet pig. She's cool," Trevor said, examining the lumberjack hat. "But you? You came back to school with yet another stupid hat."

"Hey, give that back!" Dipper pleaded, reaching out for the hat.

"Nuh-uh, Dipstick," Trevor said, placing the hat in his other hand and extending it outwards to make it even harder for Dipper to reach. "If we're going to be best friends, you're going to have to give up this garbage hat of yours."

"A friend gave me that hat!" Dipper exclaimed. "Trevor, please! Just give it back!"

"A friend?" Trevor asked in surprise. "You have friends? Where? Are they imaginary?" He chuckled. "I'm sorry, Dipper's imaginary friend, for stealing the hat you gave him," Trevor mocked in a high pitched voice, causing Dipper to grind his teeth angrily. "If you don't mind, Dipper's imaginary friend, I'm going to rip it in half because, to be frank, it's a frickin' stupid hat."

"I said give it back!" Dipper repeated angrily before swinging his fist against the side of Trevor's face, slamming him against the ground, causing him to drop the hat. Dipper quickly grabbed the hat from the ground and backed up as the surrounding students awed in Dipper's unexpected beatdown. He looked around at the students murmuring about him, as Trevor's two goons came to his aid and picked him up from the ground. Immediately regretting what he had done, Dipper slowly backed away from Trevor as he began to stand on his own again, angrily assuring his goons that he was fine.

"Look, Trevor," Dipper began. "I'm sorry. I really am. I didn't want to hurt you, but I told you to-"

"But nothing!" Trevor angrily shouted, quickly walking up to Dipper and grabbing him by the collar, holding him up in front of him. "I gave you a chance to be friends and you threw it away in favor of a crappy hat! Now I'm gonna kick your little ass!"

He held up his fist, preparing to punch him. Helpless, Dipper stopped trying to fight back, loosened up and closed his eyes, leaving himself as a clean and easy target for Trevor.

"Hey, Trevor!" a voice called out, "Drop him."

Trevor turned back. The guy in the dark navy hoodie entered the circle away from the surrounding crowd of students to make himself visible.

"Drop him?" Trevor asked. "This punk just nailed me in the face and you're defending  _him_?"

"Yeah, because you deserved it. You're the one who needlessly started picking on him in the first place," the navy hooded guy continued.

"Needlessly picking on him? I was just looking for a bit of friendship," Trevor defended with a smirk, clearly lying.

"Cut the crap, Trevor," the hooded guy said. "I was in your first hour. I saw you shooting spit wads at him. Humiliated him in front of everyone when he walked into the classroom. Then the guy's just trying to eat lunch by himself and you wanna come up to him, take his hat and start all this commotion. You're nothing but a pathetic, stereotypical bully."

The surrounding crowd went wild at the hooded boy's comeback. Dipper slightly opens his eyes, now paying attention to the commotion. He looks around and wonders why no teachers or administrators have intervened to put a stop to all the situation.

"Stereotypical?" Trevor questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh I'm sorry, do you not understand how you're stereotypical or are you too dumb to understand the word?" the boy roasted. "I mean, come on. Shooting spit wads? Bullying for lunch money? Having two goons that you probably bullied as well so they could back you up because anyone with half a brain wouldn't support the kind of thing you do?"

Trevor's goons frowned guiltily at that roast, looking at Trevor before stepping away from him, leaving his side.

"You see?" the boy addressed. "You're the very definition of stereotypical. A big fat brute, small head, thinks with his fist instead of his brain. Probably has parent issues, and I'd know because I'm not the best person either. The difference between you and I is that I'm actually aware that I'm a bad person. You, on the other hand, are probably blinded by your own stupidity, leaving you to believe you're actually a person who has redeemable qualities and is flawed by anything other than himself. Isn't that right?"

Trevor stares at the boy for a moment, looking around to think. After a brief silence, Trevor tears up, placing Dipper back down on his feet and silently turning away and walking out through the crowd from the whole situation without another word.

Without saying a word, the hooded guy walked away. Before merging back into the crowd, he took a look back at Dipper, who looked back at him, the two making direct eye contact. The kid doesn't react, and faces forward to continue walking away, the crowd watching him silently.

It doesn't take long for the crowd to break up and resume to normal again. Dipper is stuck standing still with his mouth agape, completely shocked at the events that had just occurred. He has a sick feeling in his stomach and wishes he was in the middle of a bad dream. Unsure how to react next or what to do, he simply grabs his bag, places the lumberjack hat back on his head, and rushes off in another direction. After all that has happened, he doesn't have much of an appetite anymore.

* * *

"And then he started making out with his puppets, so I think it's safe to say I dodged a bullet there," Mabel said, finishing another story from the summer.

"Eww," Sammy and Angela said in disgust.

"I don't know, I think it's kinda cute," Gretchen responded. The other three girls gave her a weird look, to which she backs out. "I mean, eww."

A beeping sound is heard, to which Sammy grabbed her phone from the top of the table and examined a notification. She gasped. "Oh my gosh! There was a fight outside on the deck!"

"Already?" Mabel asked. "Why do people gotta be so cray-cray around here? It's only the first day of school. So immature."

"You wanna see a video of the fight?" Sammy asked.

"You bet I do!" Mabel exclaimed, jumping up from her seat to watch the video with Sammy and the other girls.

Upon pressing play, a perspective from one of the students is shown from behind Trevor outside on the deck. In front of Trevor, Dipper is clearly seen on the ground after getting pushed over. No audio is heard, but Trevor is seen holding his lumberjack hat.

"Wait, is that-?" Mabel asked, looking closely at the video. "-Dipper?!"

On cue, Dipper is seen throwing the punch that knocked Trevor down on the ground. The video promptly ends right after, not showing the bit that occurred after.

"Oh my gosh," Sammy says in disbelief.

"I know right?" said Angela. "How does a single punch equal a fight? Boring."

"Angela, that was my brother!" Mabel exclaimed with concern.

"Oh, and I guess that's bad too," Angela adds.

"Your brother can sure throw a punch," Gretchen dreamily sputters.

"I really hope he's okay," Mabel says, dismissing Gretchen's previous comment.

At that moment, Mabel looks up and notices Dipper walking down the hall at the corner of her eye. Keeping his head down, he seems to be avoiding as many people as he can.

"There he is," Mabel says as she notices him. "Dipper!" she calls out, with Dipper catching her glance before walking off even faster with his head down, leaving her and the other girls to watch him with concern.

* * *

There are about ten minutes of lunch left to spare, so Dipper decides to start making his way to his next class, which is inconveniently located across the school. He tries to keep his head down as he quickly walks through the halls, aiming to just blend in and attract as little attention as possible.

He continues to think about the navy hooded kid who defended him from Trevor. It was so unexpected and out of nowhere. By the way he dressed too, it seemed like he has a much darker and rougher personality than Trevor did. His hoodie had all kinds of rips, stains and other marks on it. Being hooded, it was hard to tell, but it looked like he had dark brown hair. Long too, as large locks hung out as he looked down.

He also wore black jeans, which were also ripped, but not the stylish kind of ripped jeans. These rips looked more legitimately obtained rather than an intentional style choice. And his shoes had holes in them too. The way he talked was also tense and threatening. Overall, upon first glance, you would take him for some angry, homeless kid.

But in the end, he had just saved Dipper and even potentially a bunch of other victims from Trevor, who was always known as one of the biggest bullies of the school. Maybe he could be homeless, or just be really poor, and maybe angry, but he didn't seem like the bad guy like he had said he was.

At that exact moment, he turned the corner in the hallway and conveniently spotted the navy hooded kid kicked back against a wall next to two separate vending machines. He was looking at the ground and seemingly didn't even notice Dipper standing there looking at him.

Dipper only felt it was necessary for him to walk up and meet him, or thank him at the very least. He was hesitant though. Although he just saved his life, his appearance still represents some sort of personality that he may want to just avoid entirely.

Despite his hesitations, he gave in and walked up to him. In the end, he at least owes him his thanks.

"Uh...hey, man," Dipper said, as he stopped in front of him.

The guy brought his head up and looked at Dipper. He grinned, which Dipper didn't expect in this moment.

"Hey," He said, "You alright after all of that?"

"Oh, yeah. No, I'm good," Dipper assured. "I just came here to say thanks for defending me. That was just kinda unexpected. Thought I was done there."

The kid nodded. "Yeah, I never liked Trevor. He deserved it. I've seen the stuff he's done to you and other kids years back and seeing him back and at it again, it was just necessary to put him in his place, you know?"

"Um, yeah," Dipper agreed, rubbing the back of his head at the awkwardness of his upcoming question. "It's kinda awkward, I mean, I don't recall ever knowing you or seeing you around back then. If you don't mind me asking, who are you exactly?"

The guy chuckled, which also took Dipper by surprise a bit, now knowing he actually can put on a smile and laugh a bit. Maybe he's not as dark as he originally thought.

"Nah, it's cool. I get that a lot, I don't mind." He held his hand out. "Derrick Mendez."

Dipper shook his hand. "Dipper Pines. Although, even knowing your name now, I can definitely say I don't recall ever knowing you or seeing you around."

"Yeah, I'm not the most social guy out there. I've always been kind of a loner." Derrick admitted.

"Why? I mean, you seem cool enough to have more friends than I can ever get." Dipper asked, unintentionally poking fun at himself and his lacking social ability.

"I don't know. I just never really had the patience to go around making friends, I guess," he answered, shrugging.

Dipper thought for a moment before proceeding with his next question. "Well, this is kind of an awkward thing to admit, but you know, I'm not exactly the best social person either, except it's unintentional. So, I don't know, maybe we could be friends? Unless you don't want to, of course."

"Sure, I'll be your friend," Derrick casually accepted with a grin. "Wanna grab a soda,  _friend_?" Derrick asked, pointing to the soda vendor right next to him.

"Umm, I would, but I don't have any money on me right now."

"Ha, who said anything about  _buying_  a soda? Wanna see a trick?" Derrick asked. He looked around the hall to verify there were no adults around. He then uses his fist to pound the top of the glass of the machine twice. Then he backs up and kicks the bottom of the door once, popping the machine door right open. He reaches in and grabs two Pitt Colas, handing one to Dipper and kicking the door shut.

"Woah, nice!" Dipper compliments, checking out the can Derrick just gave him. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

"Uhhh, someone taught me," Derrick replied, opening his can and taking a sip. "It doesn't work on the snack machine though. Which sucks, because I could go for a bag of Burrito Bites right now."

Dipper then realized something and grinned. He set his can of Pitt Cola to the side and walked up to the snack machine.

"You're not the only one who knows tricks. Check this out." Dipper places his hands on the side of the vending machine. He had never done this trick himself before, so he had to go by memory from when he was first shown it. He tapped the edge with his hands, and then popped the door open with his elbow as he said, "Bippidy-boop. Wop." Just like Soos showed him.

"How about that?" Derrick said in awe. "Now where'd you learn to do that?"

Dipper threw Derrick a bag of Burrito Bites and then shut the door of the machine. "Uhhh, someone taught me." He said, mimicking Derrick's own response. "Consider it my repayment for you saving me from getting beaten up." He grabbed his Pitt Cola again and cracked it open. He raised it up in front of Derrick. "Cheers, my new friend."

Derrick chuckled as he clinked his own Pitt Cola can against Dipper's. "Cheers, dude."

The two took sips from their Pitt Cola cans. At that moment, the bell for the end of lunch had ringed, also indicating the movement to the next class period.

"Guess lunch is over," Derrick said. "I should probably be on my way."

Dipper gulped down a sip of Pitt Cola. "Yeah, same here. It was cool meeting you. Thanks again for saving me back there, and also for the soda machine trick."

"No problem, man," Derrick responded. "Hey, thanks for your snack machine trick. You seem cooler than I initially made you out to be. Instead of sitting by yourself at lunch next time, why don't we hang out together?"

Dipper smiled. "That'd be pretty neat."

Derrick began walking backward with his soda in hand. "Cool. I'll see you around, Dipper."

As he turned around, he ran bumped straight into someone, spilling his Pitt Cola can all over them.

Mabel gasped as she saw the giant soda stain on her sweater. "My new sweater!"

"My soda!" Derrick exclaimed.

"You spilled your soda on my new sweater!" Mabel exclaimed.

"More like your new sweater got in the way of my soda," Derrick claimed.

"You bumped into me!" Mabel exclaimed angrily.

"Um, no," Derrick denied. "You bumped into  _me_."

"Oh boy," Dipper said innocently, watching the incident from the distance.

Annoyed, Mabel just slipped past Derrick and approached Dipper, with Derrick rolling his eyes as he walked off in the opposite direction.

"You alright?" Dipper asked his sister.

"Could be better," Mabel answered, examining the soda spill on her sweater once more. "But don't worry about that. Are you okay? I heard you got into a fight with Trevor."

"Oh yeah, I'm okay," Dipper answered. "Few scratches. No biggie."

"Are you sure? You didn't get in trouble?" Mabel asked. "You know how peeved Mom and dad are going to be if they find out that I brought Waddles to school and you go in a fight on our first day."

"They won't find out about anything," Dipper assured. "I'm fine.  _You_  just need to make sure Waddles doesn't get caught for the rest of the day."

"I'm trying my hardest," Mabel said. "But sometimes he's just too cute and Waddle-y to keep cooped up in my backpack."

"Well, try a little harder, maybe?" Dipper asked, beginning to walk away. "I gotta go to my next class. I'll see you later."

"Dipper, wait!" Mabel called out, causing him to stop in place. "Look, I'm sorry for not keeping my promise of sitting with you at lunch. I promise to save you a seat with me and the girls at lunch tomorrow though."

"Oh, no need," Dipper said. "I actually made a new friend today and I'm gonna hang with him at lunch tomorrow."

"Oh, really?" Mabel said, surprised. "That's great. Who is he?"

Dipper looked at the cola stain on Mabel's sweater and then back at her. "Now probably wouldn't be the best time to tell you." She raised an eyebrow, confused. Dipper looked at the clock on the wall and began walking off again. "I really gotta go. See you later."

Mabel was left on her own in the hallway. She was confused on what he could've meant by it 'not being the best time to tell her', so she began to consider a few different options while she went on her own way to her next class, examining the soda stain on her sweater once more in disgust.

* * *

Dipper arrived at his next class period. The classroom wasn't quite full just yet, but the next bell hadn't rung just yet so some students still weren't coming back from lunch. He took this opportunity to go up to the teacher's desk and personally explain that his nickname is Dipper and not to call him by his real name. After this was done, he sat himself down in a seat that wasn't yet occupied.

As he sat waiting for the bell to ring, students kept coming in. Eventually, Trevor himself walked inside the classroom. Dipper quickly avoided eye contact with him and pretended to not even notice his presence. Trevor looked at him, however, but simply walked right past him. He sat on the other side of the room, out of range to be able to do anything to him without getting noticed.

The bell finally rang, and the teacher shut the door. As the teacher began their introduction, Dipper looked up and glanced over at Trevor, who looked completely out of the mood and kept to himself.

"Welcome class. I know that most of you, if not, all of you are finding the first day of school exhausting, but I hope you all are getting mentally prepared," the teacher began.

Dipper thought about it. Derrick's words must have really gotten to Trevor and he couldn't believe it. After their earlier encounter, Dipper thought any future meeting with Trevor was going to be a total nightmare. However, as it seemed right now, Trevor looked completely uninterested in creating any commotion with him or anyone else.

_"This is your final year of middle school and it will fly by, and before you know it, you will all be in high school."_

Dipper was excited for the school year now. A bad day suddenly took an unexpected turn for the best. His biggest bully may be done bullying him once and for all and he may have finally made his first true friend in middle school.

_"And before you know it, high school will fly by..."_

It was from this point forward, that things were finally starting to look up for the school year. And for the future.

_"...and you will all start preparing for college."_

* * *

_IULHQGV FRPH LQ DOO VKDSHV DQG VLCHV_

_EXW NQRZ BRXU HQHPLHV, RU WKHUH ZLOO EH VXUSULVHV_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first time posting on AO3. I've already posted this fic and been continually updating it over on Fanfiction.net, but some folks suggested that I should also post here. And so I'm giving it a shot. I'm already about eleven chapters in on Fanficition.net so I'll be updating this a bit frequently at first so I can get caught up with that. Once that's done, expect new chapters between every 1-2 weeks. 
> 
> Anyways, this is Gravity Falls: Once More. A sequel fanfiction where I'm trying to follow the canon as closely as I can. I've even since read Journal 3 and so I'll incorporate elements from that as well. I'll try to stay as close to the canon as possible, but if I make a mistake down the line, then I apologize in advance!
> 
> I'm usually lengthy about these notes but considering I'm kinda just reposting for these first ten chapters, then I'll just keep them brief for now. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy!
> 
> -Absolute Rift
> 
> Few final side notes:
> 
> -Story tags will be updated as the story progresses.  
> -The story is formatted similarly to the series in that chapters are organized by "episodes". An "episode" is a three-part series of chapters. Yes, there is continuity. No one-shots.  
> -There will be ending ciphers at the end of each "episode" (the end of the third part). This prologue is an exception because I don't classify it as an "episode".


	2. Prologue: Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nearly four years later...

_[Nearly 4 Years Later]_

_[June 2016; Last Day of Junior Year]_

* * *

 

The clock hit three in the afternoon and the final bell rang. The school year was officially over. Students started flooding out of classrooms, stampeding down the halls. Everyone was rushing to get home and start their summer vacation, finally getting a solid three-month break from the constraints of high school.

Students began to burst straight through the main doors, rushing toward the designated areas of their transportation methods. Some students stayed back though, whether to socialize, wait to be picked up, or take part in the ongoing after-school extracurricular activities.

Dipper Pines was one of these students that stayed on campus, but he had other plans.

The sixteen-year-old stood by his locker, cleaning it out of his personal belongings before leaving for the summer. Verifying he had everything he needed, he closed it and looked to his right.

A few lockers down was Madison Calias, a smart girl Dipper knew in some of his AP classes that he has also been interested in for some time now.

Throughout his time in high school, Dipper has admittedly fallen for girls that were far out of his league. But slowly, the idea of getting together with the beautiful popular girl seemed like nothing but an impossibility for someone like him, so he tried to mainly stick to people within his obtainable range. Someone like him. To him, Madison was really attractive and seemed to fit well enough within his league so it wouldn't look like he was paying someone to go out with him if they did hit it off. Although they didn't talk more than he did with any of the other average acquaintances he made during the school year, he wanted to try and change that by asking to keep in touch over the summer. That is, of course, if his nervousness doesn't interfere more than he expects it to.

She stood by her locker, talking with her other friends. Dipper looked intently, already beginning to feel his nervous sweats beginning to drip down his forehead. He quickly took off his lumberjack hat(which he still held onto and continued to wear since Wendy gave it), wiped away the sweat with his hand and then brushed his hair back. He placed the hat back on his head and took a deep breath. Realizing he'll only be progressively less ready the more he waits, he decided to walk over to her.

He quietly stepped over toward the group until he halted right in front of Madison. He may have stepped over a bit too quietly, however, as all the girls seemed to not even notice his presence, and kept talking with one another. After standing there awkwardly for a few seconds and not knowing how else to get their attention, he cleared his throat loudly, bringing the girls' heads his way.

They stared at him blankly for a good moment while Dipper kept silent, but he felt like he could hear his heart about to break out of his chest.

"Um, h-hey Madison," he managed to force out of him, his nervousness continuing to increase every passing second.

Madison acknowledged him. "Hey, Dipper," she casually responded.

Her friends began to turn away, quietly bidding goodbye to her before walking off, leaving the two alone. This somewhat alleviated Dipper's stress, as he no longer needs to worry about embarrassing himself in front of a whole crowd now. It still didn't make him any less sweaty.

Madison turned toward her locker and opened it as she spoke to Dipper. "So how did you do on Brook's final?"

Mr. Brook was his AP U.S. History teacher. He had literally just come from finishing his exam for that class. He nervously cleared his throat, trying to keep himself together. "Oh, just fine. Easy test. It was all common sense."

"Right?" she agreed as she grabbed a book out of her locker. "I didn't think it was nearly as bad as the others made it out to be. It's good to know you feel the same way."

"Exactly," Dipper nervously chuckled. "And speaking of feeling the same way-I mean-!" He panicked, cutting himself off.

"What?" Madison asked, turning toward him with a confused look.

"Nothing!" Dipper lied, currently wanting to strangle himself for letting something so stupid come out of his mouth. Clearing his throat once again, he tried to shift the conversation. "Anyways, I was gonna ask you, um, what your summer plans are?"

"Oh," she said, dismissing his previous outburst. "Nothing too interesting, I guess. Just doing a bunch of community service this summer to rack up service hours for graduation, working on online summer college classes, working with the student government with my plans as president for next school year, and going out with my new boyfriend."

"Wow, that actually sounds like a busy sum-" Dipper began, but stopped upon processing her last part. "Wait, new boyfriend?!"

"Yeah," she said dreamily with a blush. "Greg Menkins asked me to be his girlfriend earlier and I said yes!"

Dipper stared at her in total shock for a good moment before he's able to speak up again. "G-Greg Menkins?"

"There he is!" she said, pointing to the side.

Dipper looked over and saw Greg walking over to them at that very moment. He was a scrawny kid with long, bright orange hair and pale skin. His glasses were bigger than his face and he was wearing the brightest red shirt he could've picked to wear that day. To top it off, he was about a foot shorter than him.

"Hey Maddy," Greg said as he walked right up to Madison. She then bent down so the two could share a quick kiss on the lips.

"Hey babe," she said with a dreamy smile.

Greg noticed Dipper, who was staring at the two with his mouth agape and his eye twitching.

"Who's this?" Greg asked skeptically as he scanned Dipper from head to toe.

"This is Dipper," she clarified. "You know him. He's in our AP US History class."

"Oh right," he said, shaking his head at his mistake. "My bad, Dipper. Should've known from the hat."

"It's...fine," Dipper bitterly responded, still shocked at what he's currently witnessing.

"Anyways babe," Greg said, turning back to Madison. "I have a bus to catch. Just wanted to see you once more before heading out. See you at dinner tonight?"

"Absolutely," she responded with a bright smile.

"Great," Greg said. He turned back to Dipper. "Have a good summer, Dipper."

Dipper was too bitter to say the same back. But it didn't matter, as Greg already had begun walking off before he could even respond anyway.

Madison sighed dreamily as she watched him walk off. "Can't believe such a nice and smart guy like  _him_  would ask me out. He's so humble too. Seeing him so nervous when he asked me out was so cute!"

Dipper didn't know if it was possible to get any more irritated than he currently was. But this revelation did just that. He turned toward her and responded the best way he could at the moment. "Yep."

She turned back toward him. "So anyway, what are you doing this summer?"

Dipper's brain had basically given up on the entire situation, so he just continued to respond in the most lifeless way possible. "Um, you know. Stuff, I guess."

She chuckled as she grabbed another book from her locker, completely oblivious of his bitter nature. "Well, don't work  _too_ hard."

Dipper knew she was joking, but he was in no mood for it. He wanted nothing more than for the conversation to just end already. "Heh, I'll try not to," He blankly responded.

Madison closed her locker shut and turned back toward him. "Well, I should be on my way. I guess I'll see you next year?"

"Yeah, probably," Dipper agreed blankly.

"Cool," she said, walking off. "See ya!"

Dipper watched her walk away until she left the building through the main entrance at the end of the hall. He sighed, slumping himself against the lockers in frustration. He felt embarrassed with himself despite not having anything to truly be embarrassed by at that moment.

He hadn't been successful with a girl since the road trip he went on with Grunkle Stan. That trip, he received the numbers and emails of several different girls using Stan's 'technique'. Even then that wasn't successful, as he basically made himself look like a playing jerk in the end. But at least he was able to actually talk to girls. How he's only gotten worse at it in only four years is one of the few mysteries that he can never solve.

He was suddenly startled by a clapping sound. He turned around and saw Derrick, his best friend, approaching him while slow clapping.

"Way to go," Derrick said in a sarcastic tone as he stood in front of Dipper.

"Wait, what? You overheard all of that?" Dipper asked frantically.

"Overheard? Nah," Derrick denied, casually placing his hands in his pockets. "I was standing by that door back there and watched the whole thing," he clarified, gesturing toward the door down the hall behind him.

"Ugh!" Dipper exclaimed, tugging down on the flaps of his hat in embarrassment.

"Hey man, it wasn't that bad," Derrick defended. "I remember when you asked out Angie Michaels to homecoming. At least this time, it wasn't your fault."

"C'mon man!" Dipper said, cringing as he remembered the Angie Michaels incident. "You promised you'd never speak of that day!"

"Alright, fine," Derrick said, accepting the blame. "I'm just saying that this is nothing compared to that."

"Yeah, well, I feel just as dead inside as I am after any of my other failed attempts with a girl before," Dipper said, beginning to walk down the hall.

"Why are you even trying to ask someone out now?" Derrick asked as he followed. "Aren't you going away for the summer anyway?"

"Yeah, I guess," Dipper answered, remembering his upcoming trip to Gravity Falls. "I wasn't really trying to ask her out though. I was gonna ask to keep in touch, but I guess that's out of the question."

"Is having her as a friend not good enough for you?" Derrick asked, raising an eyebrow.

"C'mon man, it's not like that," Dipper defended, "It's just...freakin' Greg Menkins? Seriously?"

"I got you, man. I was just joking," Derrick clarified. "But I think it's a safe bet that you have a shot if their relationship goes south this summer."

"Maybe, but I'm not gonna bet on that happening. Nor am I going to worry about it," Dipper said, working up a smile. "As you mentioned, I got a summer in Gravity Falls to look forward to."

"Right. Gravity Falls: the town of mythical creatures and mystery," Derrick said in a dry tone, rolling his eyes.

Dipper realized Derrick's tone and lowered his eyebrows in annoyance. "And you still don't believe me."

"Dipper, you're my friend, but you're trying to convince me that there's such thing as gnomes and unicorns," Derrick chuckled. "And coincidentally, I just found out that my grandfather lives in Gravity Falls himself and the weirdest thing he's ever seen is a spork."

"Wait! I think I've read a creature called a spork before in one of my Great Uncle's journals," Dipper said, turning to the side to think it over. "I think it was some sort of large hybrid between a stork and a pig that roams somewhere within-"

"For god's sake Dipper," Derrick cut off with a facepalm. "I'm talking about the utensil!"

"Oh."

"Yeah," Derrick said. "My grandfather doesn't get out a lot. It took him until his early 70s to figure out there was such thing as a spoon-fork combination. I'm not talking about some weird stork-pig hybrid. Look, man. I know you're smart, but that's just crazy. Along with the fact that you've never even shown me proof of  _any_ of these weird things you talk about, can you really blame me for not believing you?"

"I  _have_ shown you proof!" Dipper exclaimed, getting in Derrick's face. "Remember that one time you came over and showed you Mabel's scrapbook?"

"Your sister's little coloring book isn't proof, dude," Derrick said, lowering his eyebrows.

"Scrapbook, man! Scrapbook!" Dipper reiterated, stretching his arms out frustratedly.

"Alright, whatever," Derrick carelessly replied with an eye roll. "Look, if our school yearbook team knows how to edit a photo so it looks like our football team won homecoming, I'm sure it's not impossible that your arts and crafts freak-of-a-sister knows how to do the same with the pictures in her book."

"You seriously think she went through the effort to edit our summer photos to make it seem like we were encountered monsters?" Dipper asked. As he thought of his question again, he realized that Mabel is exactly the type of person to go through the effort for something so crazy.

"Do you even know your sister, dude?" Derrick asked, which was the exact thing Dipper expected once he realized the flaw in his own question.

"Yeah, you're right. Nevermind," Dipper retracted, but a confident smile then struck his face. "Alright, you know what? Forget the scrapbook. Since my parents just bought me a phone earlier this week, I'll just take pictures and text you evidence myself."

"Alright, whatever you say," Derrick chuckled. He still wasn't buying into Dipper's crazy ideas about weirdness in Gravity Falls, but he didn't want to keep drawing out an argument they've been having for years. "And wait, your parents just bought you a phone but your sister has had her own for years now?"

"Yeah, I'm gonna be honest, I'm not much of a phone guy," Dipper admitted as he took his phone out of his pocket to show him. "Our parents just figured that if we're going to Gravity Falls again, it would be better if I was the one keeping them up to date since...well, you know how Mabel is."

"Unfortunately," Derrick said distastefully.

It's never been a secret to Dipper that Derrick disliked Mabel and vice versa. Their first meeting may have been opened by a petty accident, but that one accident destroyed all good impressions of one another for the future. When Dipper finally revealed to her that he had befriended Derrick, she wasn't a fan. Besides their bitter first meeting, she just wasn't a fan of his mannerisms, appearance, behavior, and dark nature. And in the same way, Derrick wasn't a fan of Mabel's quirky nature and behavior. The two were almost total opposites of one another and they didn't attract at all.

So Dipper did try to keep his promise of keeping the two apart but occasionally stepped over the line in various attempts to get the two to get along. Upon reminding them about how petty they were about their first meeting, this would convince them to at least try and put their differences and past beside so they could try to be friends, but it never seemed to work out. The two would just continue to hate and make fun of one another. Every future meeting and interaction with one another was always bitter and petty nonsense, despite Dipper's attempts at being the peacemaker.

"Well," Dipper began. "I gotta go meet up with her so we can head home and finish packing. We leave for Gravity Falls in the morning. So if you don't feel like being around her…"

"I'll just come with," Derrick shrugged. "We can walk and talk a bit more before we part ways for three months."

"Alright, I guess," Dipper said. He didn't have any problem with Derrick's decision, but he hoped that he and Mabel wouldn't cause a scene once they met up.

Mabel preferred that Dipper wouldn't keep being friends with Derrick because of his bad background. Dipper knew Derrick had done bad things before. But Derrick didn't like talking about them. Despite how much Dipper had opened up to Derrick about his own problems, Derrick kept to himself with most of his own issues. The most he knew was that Derrick had a bad relationship with his dad. He also knew his dad was divorced, but Derrick had never made any mention of his mother, yet he always talks about how much he resents his father. Beyond that, Derrick's history was mostly a mystery.

But it never really mattered because Derrick has always been a good friend to him. Despite what might be of his background and his bad relationship with Mabel, he was never bad to Dipper. Even if he befriended him because he saved him from a bully, they actually connected really well with one another. The two hung out often and generally looked out for one another. Derrick may not be the nerdy best friend one might expect Dipper to have, but he was great to have around. Especially since he only had Mabel around growing up, he never really had many masculine influences from his surroundings, so having Derrick around for nearly four years has kind of balanced things out a bit.

Derrick was a good friend, despite their arguments about existing weirdness in Gravity Falls. And Dipper was totally ready to prove Derrick wrong once he got evidence back in Gravity Falls anyway.

* * *

In the art room, Sammy was looking up at Gretchen, who stood on top of a ladder holding a box up to a shelf. Holding her breath, she pushed and slid the box directly on top of it. She let out a deep breath and began inhaling and exhaling heavily in exhaustion.

"There!" she called back down at Sammy. "All the art supplies are put away."

"Great!" Sammy exclaimed joyfully. She turned back toward Mabel, who was standing in the corner of the room beside a counter. "Mabel! I think we've packed up everything for the year."

"Oh, that's great!" Mabel said dismissively as she picked a jar of glitter from the counter to examine it.

"Mabel?" Sammy asked, grabbing Mabel's attention as she walked up to her. "Why's the glitter out? We're supposed to have all the supplies packed away already."

"Oh I know," Mabel assured with a smile. "I'm just checking to see which glitter I want to bring home that will go great with the new outfit I'm designing."

"Mabel! You know we can't take any art supplies from the school home with us!" Sammy exclaimed fearfully. "You know they'll blame us for anything the school finds missing in this classroom!"

"Exactly! Which is why instead of taking home one of these jars of glitter, I'm going to dump it all over me. Instead of stealing, it'll be a mess that I'll have to go home and clean up with a vacuum. Then I'll have gotten the glitter from school  _without_ stealing!" Mabel clarified, confidently smiling at the presumed effectiveness of her plan.

Sammy gave her a questioning look for a good moment as Gretchen walked over to join the two. "Why don't you just go out and buy more glitter?"

Mabel thought about the question for a brief moment before taking a jar of green and blue glitter and dumping it on her head, with Sammy and Gretchen promptly standing back to avoid getting covered in glitter themselves.

Looking back at Mabel, they saw that the glitter quickly spread across every bit of her hair, clothes and exposed body. She was sparkling green and blue from head to toe. Mabel appeared to be thinking again for a moment before smiling widely.

"Yeah, this is way more fun," she said, before promptly sneezing, making a cloud of glitter that filled the surrounding air.

"It sure looks like fun," Gretchen admitted, with Sammy nodding in agreement.

"Girls!" a voice called from behind. The three turned to see Angela sprinting up to them excitedly with her phone in hand.

"What's up Angel-ah-ahh-AH-CHOO!" Mabel sneezed again, forming yet another cloud of glitter. She looked up with a guilty smile as she rubbed her nose. "What's up?"

"Firstly, gazuntite," Angela said politely, before building up her excitement again. "And secondly, I just found read that Madison Calias is going out with Greg Menkins!"

"Awww!" Sammy and Gretchen exclaimed excitedly.

"Wait, what?!" Mabel exclaimed in concern. "My brother liked Madison. And I think he was going to ask her out today. I hope he doesn't get too hurt about this when he finds out."

"Yeah," Angela agreed. "At least it isn't as bad as what happened with Angie Michaels." She started chuckling until Mabel gave her a stern expression as if she was warning her. Angela quickly noticed and lowered her head guiltily. "Sorry."

Mabel rolled her eyes. "Anyways, hopefully, he doesn't take the news too bad if he heard it already. We're leaving for Gravity Falls tomorrow and I don't want this to get to him. I might have to bust out an old list of rebound crushes I had made for him last time we were there. Just in case he has trouble moving on, and believe me, he usually does."

"And what about you?" Sammy asked her with a smirk.

"What about me?"

"You talked about all those boys you met during your last time in Gravity Falls," Sammy explained. "Are you going to look for another summer romance?"

"Ooooh," Angela and Gretchen said excitedly.

"Oh no, not this time," Mabel said sternly. "Absolutely not."

"Awww," Angela and Gretchen then said disappointedly.

"Why not?" Sammy asked.

"Because I'm happy with how I am without a boyfriend," Mabel said, crossing her arms. "I already spent enough summers before I went to Gravity Falls hunting a summer romance. It never led anywhere. Sure, I met some cute boys in Gravity Falls and had my first kiss but it's not like any of that led anywhere. It was just a waste of time."

"So no boys at all this time? No cute merman or even a dreamy centaur?" Gretchen asked.

Mabel sighed. "Look, if I come across someone who I feel is really special, then I'll go for it. But I'm not gonna go around chasing every opportunity at getting a guy like I used to do. I used to be really crazy about boys before and even pushed my brother aside for them. I don't want to do that again."

"That's sweet of you to think about putting your brother before yourself, Mabel," Angela said earnestly.

"Yeah, and we're gonna miss you when you're away in Gravity Falls," Gretchen said sadly, Angela and Sammy nodding in agreement.

"Aw, I'm gonna miss you girls too," Mabel said solemnly, pulling them together into a big group embrace, the other girls not even minding that she's still covered in glitter.

If there's anything Mabel was going to miss during her trip back to Gravity Falls, it was her friends. Unlike her brother, she had made several other friends growing up. However, those friendships couldn't keep up as her friends either moved away, changed, or just stopped talking to her out of the blue. Angela, Sammy, and Gretchen were very simple friends but they were always there for her since she met them in eighth grade.

Mabel had never forgotten about Candy and Grenda and actually kept in touch with them during her time in Piedmont. What was a shame was how she would probably never get to join these two groups of friends together. She knows that if she could bring Angela, Sammy, and Gretchen together with Candy and Grenda, they'd have the best friend group imaginable. But unfortunately, the likelihood of either group meeting the other was too unlikely outside of video chat. But even video chat wouldn't be quite the same, as even Mabel didn't even find video chatting Candy and Grenda to feel the same as when the three were hanging together in Gravity Falls.

"Woah," a voice intercepted from behind the girls. They broke their group hug and turned to see Dipper and Derrick standing by the door looking at them. "What kind of love fest did we just stumble upon?"

"Oh great," Mabel said, eyes narrowing in annoyance. "Dipper, why'd you bring  _him_ here?"

Dipper opened his mouth to speak up, but Derrick cut him off. "My best pal's leaving for a few months. Am I not allowed to chat with him once more before he leaves and has to put up with no one else but you for three months?"

"Derrick, please. We literally just talked about this on our way here," Dipper reminded, narrowing his eyes at him warningly. Derrick just crossed his arms and looked to the side silently. Dipper then turned back toward Mabel. "Anyways, ready to get going, sis?"

"You bet, bro-bro!" Mabel said, her sour attitude caused by Derrick immediately reverting back to normally cheerful attitude. She quickly grabbed her handbag and walked up beside Dipper. He was suddenly hit by a few specs of the glitter that she was covered in, prompting him to move a few steps away from her.

"Um, why are you covered in glitter?" Dipper asked as he used his hands to fan away the specs from his face.

"Because it's more fun than buying glitter from the arts and crafts store," she said, her tone making it sound as if the answer was obvious.

"That's just-" Dipper started, preparing to tell her how ridiculous her reasoning is but immediately realized the pointlessness of his argument. "You know what? Nevermind. Let's just get going. We have to finish packing tonight."

"I got it, Mr. Impatient," Mabel poked. "Just let me finish saying goodbye to my friends."

She turned away from him and walked back toward Angela, Sammy, and Gretchen. They extended their arms out and formed one last heartfelt group hug.

"Goodbye girls," Mabel said wistfully to the three.

"Don't forget to send pictures of cute centaurs if you find any," Gretchen reminded sorrowly.

"Of course, Gretchen," Mabel told her. "If I find a cute centaur, I will send you as many pictures of him as you want."

Dipper and Derrick stood watching the four girls from behind. Derrick looked completely uninterested in everything.

"Why are girls so emotional? They know it's only gonna be three months, right?" Derrick asked, expressing his annoyance of the situation.

"Just chill out, man," Dipper requested. "I don't want to have to deal with separating you two again on the day before our trip."

"Whatever," Derrick dismissed with an eye roll. "I guess I'll just get going myself."

"You do that!" Mabel called out, having overheard Derrick's statement.

" _Aaaand_  I'm just going to ignore that," Derrick dismissed. He then held his fist out toward Dipper. "I guess I'll see you again next year granted you don't get eaten alive by one of those giant man-eating spiders that you claim exist."

Dipper chuckled, bumping his own fist against Derrick's. "You joke now, but I'm telling you. I'll get you real evidence this time."

"Oh man, and I absolutely can't wait," Derrick said sarcastically, turning around. He waved his hand back once more. "I'll see you around, Dipper."

"See ya, Derrick," Dipper waved back as he watched Derrick walk out of the room.

Mabel walked up to Dipper and placed her hand on his shoulder. "It's alright, Dipper. I'm sure Soos will provide you with enough brotherly love to get your mind off that freak."

"Shut up," Dipper chuckled, slapping her hand off of his shoulder. "C'mon, let's go home."

Dipper walked out of the room, with Mabel about to follow him until she glanced back at her friends in the room. They waved at her, which prompted her to wave back at them one last time before following her brother.

The girls put their arms down, the three now left on their own in the room.

"Man, I'm gonna miss Mabel," Gretchen sighed. Sammy and Angela gave her a weird look, which she notices. "What?"

"Seriously Gretchen," Angela began. "What is with you and centaurs?"

"What? They're dreamy!" Gretchen defended. "They're half horse and half man. What doesn't sound dreamy about that?"

"The half horse part," Sammy argued, eyes narrowing in disgust. "Like, what is dreamy about that?"

"You two pick on me for liking centaurs but no one says anything about Angela's vampire boyfriend daydreams," Gretchen argued back, causing Sammy to start snickering as she looked over at Angela. Seeing Sammy laugh, Gretchen couldn't help but start giggling herself.

"Hey, at least they make movies about attractive vampires!" Angela defended, blushing. "What mainstream movies today are about hot centaurs?" However, Sammy and Gretchen couldn't stop laughing. Embarrassed at how the tables had turned on her, Angela just crossed her arms and turned away as her face burned red, leaving Sammy and Gretchen to crack up without interference.

* * *

It was 9:30 PM. The sun had already set upon the day and the night sky was clear and the neighborhood was calm and quiet.

Mabel, glitter already cleaned off of her, was in her room scavenging through her closet. Waddles sat beside her opened pink-polka-dotted purple luggage on her bed and it had more than a reasonable amount of clothes stacked inside. A bunch of different sweaters, tops, bottoms and even dresses were also spread out across her room as if she couldn't decide what she was bringing.

Every single bit of Mabel's wardrobe was handcrafted by her. Of course, she had been born with a natural talent and love for art and fashion. She picked up the ability to knit all on her own. She had a habit for designing mainly sweaters growing up, especially during her time in Gravity Falls. By the time she reached high school, her fashion sense expanded and she had begun going beyond sweaters(not to mention, having a sweater-heavy wardrobe wasn't really a blessing during hot summer days).

She soon started to design her own tops and bottoms, exclusively in her own unique style just like her sweater designs. Not only that, but she designed for others as well. Rather than getting a regular part-time job during her time in school, she found it pretty easy to profit off making outfits and other clothes for the students at her school. It was probably much more profitable than any part-time job she could've acquired anyway. She was great at what she did and all the other teens loved her style and how unique it was, aspiring to look just like her.

Now she searched her closet trying to figure out what she wanted to bring along with her to Gravity Falls, as she didn't have room for everything. And she would absolutely take everything if she could.

She then pulled out two hangers holding two different outfits. One was a sleeveless orange and yellow top with a smiley-face sun on the front, paired with jean shorts. The other hanger held a navy blue sundress patterned with yellow stars paired with a navy floppy straw hat. She ran up to her night desk which had her tablet stood on top.

"Alright," Mabel began. "Next we have a cute sun top with jean shorts and the starry night sundress with a cute hat to go with. Which one screams 'Girrrl, I didn't know it was summer until I saw your adorable outfit!' more?"

On the tablet screen, Candy and Grenda were displayed on the other end of an ongoing video call. The two girls were seen visibly examining Mabel's two outfits.

"Hmm," Candy said as she looked at the outfits. "It's a hard decision, but I think the sundress is much cuter."

"Agreed," Grenda said as she nodded her head. "The sun top screams 'Man, I'd punch her in the face for that outfit.' But the sundress screams 'Man, I'd literally kill her for that outfit!'"

"That's exactly what I was thinking!" Mabel exclaimed cheerfully. She walked back to her closet and put away the orange sun top and jean shorts before walking back to her luggage and placing the sundress on the already large stack of outfits. "Sundress it is!"

"I still can't believe it's been nearly four years since you came to Gravity Falls," Candy awed.

"Yeah. I still remember all of our times together like they was yesterday," Grenda added. She then looked to the side to think. "Although, that might be because of the concussion I got a few weeks ago. I still haven't completely recovered and I've developed a bit of short-term memory loss."

"Ah," Mabel chuckled nervously. "Um, but you're okay, right?"

Grenda still appeared to be thinking until she looked back at the screen. "Wait, what were we talking about again?"

Mabel stared at the screen for a moment, not knowing how to respond.

"It's okay. I've been helping look after her," Candy assured. "She does this."

"Um, okay then," Mabel said, simply taking her word for it. "Anyways, it stinks that we won't be able to meet right away with where both of you guys are going this week."

"Oh, don't worry," Grenda responded. "I usually get kicked out of wrestling camp early because of how much better I am compared to everyone else."

"And band finals usually take about two weeks," Candy added. "So it won't be too long before we see each other again anyway."

"Yeah, true," Mabel agreed. She sat down on her bed next to Waddles and began to pet him. "I'm just wondering about what's changed in four years. Has anything changed since we were last there?"

"I can't say," Candy said. "We live here. It's hard to tell what's changed when we're basically living every single change like it's normal."

"I mean, there are new people, but most of the old townspeople are still around too," Grenda explained. "I don't think it's too different, but then again, it's kind of hard to tell. It's also hard to tell if I'm even remembering this properly."

"Oh! They're about to finish a big new pier by the lake," Candy explained excitedly. "Big enough to host a funfair!"

"That sounds fun," Mabel admitted. "But is that it? What about the Mystery Shack?"

"We haven't really had much of a reason to go there since you left," Grenda admitted.

"I  _think_  I saw someone new working there when I passed by this one time last month," Candy said, visibly trying to think about it.

A beeping noise was then heard from Candy and Grenda's end of the call. On the screen of Candy's tablet, a dying battery sign flashed.

"Oh no, my tablet is about to die!" Candy exclaimed. "I'm sorry, Mabel. But we're going to call back later."

"No, don't worry about it," Mabel told her. "I'm going to be going to sleep in a moment anyway since I gotta wake up early for the bus. Since both of you are going away, I guess we'll just meet again in Gravity Falls."

"Totally!" Grenda exclaimed, with Candy nodding in agreement.

"Well, see you girls soon!" Mabel said, waving at the screen.

"Bye Mabel!" Candy and Grenda said together as they waved back.

At that moment, the call ended. Mabel grabbed her tablet and put it to the side. She sat up on her bed again and sighed as she looked down at Waddles and pet him again. The thought of someone new working at the Shack didn't seem to settle well with her for some reason. Not that she didn't like having a new person to meet and get to know, but she was mainly stuck in a mindset that she'd return and things would be just like how they were when she and Dipper left. She was afraid that too much change would take away from the same charm that she felt from Gravity Falls before. That the reason she loved Gravity Falls so much wouldn't be as present.

She considered all these thoughts until there was a sudden knock at her door.

"Come in!" Mabel called out.

The doorknob turned and the door slowly opened. Dipper's head peeked inside.

"What's up, Dipper?" Mabel asked.

"Hey. You finished packing?" he asked, looking around the room to see the scattered outfits everywhere and her overloaded luggage.

"Umm," Mabel thought, quickly glancing around her room as well. She looked over at her luggage, then back at Dipper. "Yeah, I'm finished. You?"

"I've been done," Dipper said as he walked into her room. He leaned himself against the wall beside the door. "Unlike you, I don't have a hundred outfits that I'm overly decisive about."

"Yeah, because you're not a girl," Mabel retorted. "News flash: most girls don't just throw on the same unwashed hoodie over the same colored shirt and call it a day the way you do."

"Hey, for your information, I do wash this hoodie," Dipper defended, opening up the dark navy hoodie he wore over his red shirt.

"When? Like a few months ago?" Mabel said, covering her nose. "Ugh, I can even smell it from over here!"

"Really funny," Dipper sarcastically remarked. "By the way, how did the 'cover myself in glitter and vacuum it off me' trick work?" he asked with a smirk.

"Not as well as I had hoped," Mabel said, crossing her arms disappointedly. "Turns out glitter is not the easiest thing to vacuum off clothes. Or skin. Or hair."

"Yeah, I figured," Dipper chuckled.

A ringing noise came from Mabel's tablet. She quickly picked it up and gasped. "Dipper! Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford are video calling!"

Dipper's eyes bulged excitedly. "Well, what are you waiting for? Answer!" he commanded as he ran up beside her in front of the screen.

She pressed the answer button. It took a few seconds to load, but eventually, Stan and Ford's faces were visible on the screen. The two were wearing winter mountains and appeared to be in a dark, cavern-esque space.

"Hi, Grunkle Stan!" Mabel greeted excitedly.

"Hey, Great Uncle Ford!" Dipper also greeted, waving at the camera.

"Kids!" Stan and Ford exclaimed in unison, smiling brightly.

"Man, I swear you two look older every time we call you," Stan added.

"And both of your hairs look grayer everytime we see you," Mabel joked.

"Ha! A joke about us getting old," Stan chuckled. "It's both funny, yet hurtful because it's true. Glad to see you haven't changed a bit, sweetie."

"I try my hardest!" Mabel gloated.

"So, if I recall, I believe today was your last day of school, correct?" Ford asked. "How did that go?"

"Nothing special," Dipper responded, despite Madison Calias coming to mind. "We're just excited to finally come back to Gravity Falls and see you guys tomorrow."

"Yeah!" Mabel agreed. She placed the tablet on her lap while she grabbed Waddles and placed him beside her. "And someone else is also really excited to see you two again," she said, placing Waddles up close in front of the camera.

"Oh, can't wait," Stan said, pretending to be excited.

"Actually, kids, we called to let you know that we, unfortunately, won't be in Gravity Falls tomorrow," Ford revealed.

"Wait, what?" Mabel questioned, putting Waddles down.

"Why not?" Dipper asked, also shocked.

"Well, as you can see," Ford began, pointing their camera to the side to reveal that they are in a confined space, with large amounts of snow outside. "We're still in the arctic circle."

"What are you guys still doing there?" Mabel asked, curious.

"A few weeks ago, I received a strange signal with a heavy strength that lined up with some unworldly anomalies I've researched before," Ford explained.

"Aliens?" Dipper asked. "Something like the saucer we went in?"

"I'm not certain," Ford admitted.

"Wait a minute," Stan halted, turning to Ford. "You never told me about  _aliens_."

"Either way," Ford said, dismissing Stan. "It was a mandatory investigation and we still haven't quite found the source yet. But we're close. We just wanted to let you both know that we won't be back in Gravity Falls right away, but we won't be too long either."

"How long will you both be?" Mabel asked.

"I can't give an exact date, but rest assured that we'll be back before the end of the month," Ford assured. "Whenever that is, we'll still have plenty of time to spend with you two upon our return."

"Yeah," Stan agreed. "Don't wait on us. Soos, Wendy, and the others will still be around at the Shack for you two. Just, ya know, don't tell your parents we aren't there."

"But you promise that you two will be back as soon as you can?" Mabel asked.

"Of course," Stan assured. "Believe me, I've seen more than enough snow to last me a lifetime. I want nothing more than for this whole investigation to be over with so we can head back and see you kids again."

"Stan's correct," Ford said. "No need to worry kids. Provided there are no obstacles on our way back, it'll shouldn't be longer than a few weeks before we meet again."

A large gust of wind is heard from the Stans' end of the call.

"It appears that the snowstorm that I tracked earlier is beginning to weigh in on our location," Ford said. "We're going to have to end the call now."

"Alright. Just be careful," Mabel told them.

"Will do, pumpkin," Stan said. "Be safe on your trip back. Both of you."

"And Dipper?" Ford called. "While I don't have time to explain to you now, I think you'll be very pleased to learn about all of the discoveries we've made these past few years."

Dipper smiled widely. "I can't wait to hear all about them when you get back."

"And I can't wait to hear about what you've written down in your own journal," Ford said.

Dipper's eyes bulged upon hearing this. He opened his mouth to say something but his mind was at a loss for words.

"Farewell, kids!" Ford said as he waved.

"Stay safe!" Stan added, waving as well.

Dipper and Mabel waved back as the video call ended. Mabel placed the tablet back to the side. They both slumped back with dejected expressions on their faces.

Dipped sighed. "So, I guess Grunkle Stan and Great Uncle Ford are going to be a bit late," he said.

"Guess so," Mabel agreed solemnly.

He turned toward to her and noticed her sad expression. "Are you okay?"

"I don't know," Mabel said, lying back completely on her bed. "I'm nervous about going back."

"Why's that?" Dipper asked. He had always figured Mabel was the least likely one of the two to be nervous about going back.

"What if Gravity Falls isn't the same as it used to be?" she asked. "It's been almost four years. What if the town just isn't the same as we remember it. Candy and Grenda say there are new people, new places…" she explained. "Candy even said she saw someone new working at the Mystery Shack!"

"C'mon, Mabel. Every town gets new people, new buildings, and other new things as time goes by. And if there's a new worker at the Shack, then Soos probably needed them. It's all completely normal," Dipper explained.

"But Gravity Falls  _isn't_ normal," Mabel argued.

"So you're saying you're worried about going back because there are gonna be a few random people on the street you don't recognize?" Dipper asked.

"No, it's just…" she began, looking up as she thought of how to explain how she felt.

As if a light bulb flashed above her head, she snapped her fingers and quickly rushed to her closet, crouched down and started digging through the bottom. Dipper watched curiously, wondering exactly what she was trying to find. After a moment, she made a noise as if she found something and crawled back out of the closet.

In her hands, she held her old scrapbook from that summer.

"That's your old scrapbook?" Dipper questioned, still not following the point she was trying to make.

"Just look," she said, sitting beside him on the bed and flipping the scrapbook open.

The two looked through the pictures of that summer. All the pictures of their various adventures were there. Neither of them had looked through it in years, so going through this scrapbook was the first real trip down memory lane that wasn't directly from their memories. As they flipped through the book, it had just occurred to Dipper how much effort that Mabel had really put into this scrapbook. It was something he never noticed at the time she made it, but the attention to detail and color to really make every page and picture pop was incredibly admirable. He smiled as he looked at every photo, occasionally cringing when they passed some of the really awkward ones.

Overall, reminiscing in those old adventures they had was an unexpected experience. It brings back the complete perspective of those moments rather than just a memory that may have a few details slightly remembered differently. The fear of being chased by the Gobblewonker. The exhilaration of playing 'Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons: Real Life Edition' against Probabilitor. The joy of going trick or treating with Mabel on Summerween. All these forgotten feelings and moments came rushing back all at once. He remembered loving that summer, but now he remembers exactly why he loved that summer.

"I loved the Gravity Falls we went to back in 2012. I'm scared I'm not going to love the Gravity Falls we go to this year," Mabel explained. "Does that make sense?"

Dipper sat on her bed, thinking about it deeply as he continued to stare at the scrapbook. "Yeah, I guess it does," he admitted. "But how do you know you're not gonna love it more?"

Mabel looked up at him. "What do you mean?"

"Here," he said, turning the pages back in the scrapbook. He turned back to the first page, which had their first day in Gravity Falls. He pointed at an average picture of the two on that day. "Look at us. No journal. No weirdness. No excitement. That day, we were just two kids whose parents sent them to stay with their great uncle for the summer. Gravity Falls was nothing but a boring, sleepy town. But soon enough, I found the journal. You got a boyfriend. I thought he was a zombie but he was really a bunch of gnomes. At that point, all bets were off. We didn't know what kind of craziness that town had in store for us. That's the thing about Gravity Falls, Mabel. We didn't know what we'd find, who we'd meet, or where we'd go. The summer just went along and we just went along with it. So yeah, things might be different this summer. I mean, I doubt it'll be exactly the same. But honestly, Gravity Falls has always been unexpected. Who knows what will come of this summer? Maybe we'll love it, maybe we'll hate it. Maybe it'll be exactly the same, maybe it'll be totally different. Who knows? We just gotta go with it. The same way we did last time. And it worked pretty well then, don't you think?"

Mabel looked to the side and thought about it, then glanced back at Dipper with a smile. "Yeah, it did work pretty well, didn't it?"

"It did. So let's just give it another shot," Dipper proposed. "We didn't know what would happen last time."

"And we don't know what'll happen this time," Mabel added.

"Exactly," Dipper said, smiling. "So let's go into this next summer with an open mind and reserve judgment until a bit later, shall we? There might not even be anything to worry about."

"You're right," Mabel agreed. "My mind is all the way open," she said, placing her hands on her head.

"Great," Dipper said, placing his hands on his own head as well. "So is mine."

The two laughed together at their own goofiness, something that still hasn't disappeared after all these years. After a good laugh, the two sighed.

"Thanks, Dipper," Mabel told him. "I needed that. I feel like I'm ready to go to Gravity Falls again."

"Anytime," he said. "Anyway, I gotta go dig out my old journal. Since there's like no anomalies here in Piedmont, I never really found much use for it. Maybe now that we're going back to Gravity Falls, I can finally give it a purpose again and have something to show Ford once he and Stan come back from the Arctic."

"You do that," Mabel said, now trying to zip her overloaded luggage shut. It takes a minute but with full sheer force, she somehow manages to zip up the unethical amount of clothing she's bringing. She turns back toward Dipper. "Success!"

"Are you sure that's not, like, gonna explode?" Dipper asked, face displaying concern at her oversized luggage.

"Nope!" Mabel confidently assured.

Dipper stared at the luggage again for a moment before just chuckling at her sister's overconfidence. He took a step out the door, grabbing hold of the doorknob as he kept his head peeking back inside. "Good night, Mabel."

"Good night, Dipper," she returned as he closed the door behind him, leaving the room.

Mabel placed her luggage off the bed and onto the floor. She got in bed and tucked herself under the sheets. She leaned forward to pet Waddles once more.

"Good night, Waddles," she whispered to him. "We have a long day tomorrow."

Mabel gently kissed Waddles on top of his head. Waddles responded with a quiet oink as he shut his eyes for the night. Mabel leaned over to her night desk and shut off her lamp, nothing but moonlight emitting from the creases of her blinds to just barely light up the room.

She lied back and thought to herself. She was worried about coming to a different Gravity Falls before, but now she's just excited that she's finally coming back to Gravity Falls at all. After all this time and after all the delays.

There was never meant to be so many delays for this second trip in the first place. She and Dipper should've gone back the very next summer after their first trip, but couldn't because the flu had spread around their house that summer. The summer after, they couldn't go because their father injured his leg and they needed to help their mother look after him and the house while he recovered. Then they couldn't go last summer either because their parents planned a vacation in Mexico, which is a place their parents always wanted to go to for some reason. It wasn't a bad trip per say, but it was no Gravity Falls. Winters were off the table because of other visiting family and the week-long spring breaks and other short vacations don't warrant enough time to spend in a place as a big as Gravity Falls. If they were going to have another trip to Gravity Falls, it had to be a long one. So before this summer, Dipper and Mabel had put complete emphasis to their parents on how they want nothing more than to go back this summer and not to make any other plans.

And judging by the fact that they were leaving the next morning, it seems like that it finally worked in their favor.

* * *

 

_VRRQ ZH'OO PHHW DJDLQ_

_VRPH VXQQB GDB_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of the Prologue. We move onto the first main "episode" next chapter. Some discretion: the prologue was very OC-heavy, but this really isn't the case going forward. There will be some major OCs going forward, but I plan for the familiar characters to have a dominant presence. And admittedly, most of the OCs in these chapters are one-off for the sake of having people to work with in Piedmont. So yeah, don't worry about things getting too OC-heavy if that isn't your jam. 
> 
> Tune in next chapter for the start of the first episode: Return to the Falls


	3. Return to the Falls: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dipper and Mabel embark on their trip to Gravity Falls but run into a small setback. Meanwhile, the people at the Mystery Shack prepare for their arrival.

It was about 9 AM on a normal Saturday morning. Dipper and Mabel were aboard the bus heading to Gravity Falls, their bags, and luggage beside them. Waddles also sat sleeping on Mabel's lap. Their trip had begun about four hours ago when they were first picked up from the bus stop back in Piedmont.

Mabel was kicking her legs back and forth in her seat excitedly, while Dipper sat slumped beside the window, sleeping comfortably.

"Dipper!" Mabel exclaimed, startling him awake.

"What is it this time, Mabel?" Dipper asked, somewhat irked, as he rubbed his eyes.

"We're about fifteen minutes before entering Oregon!" Mabel said excitedly. "Aren't you excited?"

"Sure," Dipper said sarcastically. "But we also have another  _four hours_  until we actually get to Gravity Falls."

"Yep!" Mabel agreed, not detecting his bitter sarcasm. "We're getting closer!"

"Mabel, this is the fourth time you've woken me up just to tell me we're getting closer," Dipper said bluntly. "I get you're excited, but can you please stop waking me up every hour just to let me know how close we are?"

"I'm sorry, Dipper," she apologized, frowning guiltily. "I just can't help myself. I can't stop thinking about what's gonna happen when we get there."

"We'll head straight to the Shack, I guess," Dipper answered with shrug. "Gotta drop our stuff off somewhere. I just hope Soos didn't do anything with our old room. I'm not sleeping in his old break room."

"Ah, the Mystery Shack," Mabel marveled. "I wonder what Soos has done with it since he took over."

"Yeah," Dipper agreed, beginning to think about it himself. "I wonder if he's made any big changes or if it's more-or-less the same. Maybe he actually innovated it to make it real attraction rather than keeping it the same tourist trap that Stan made it."

* * *

"And if you dudes thought that was cool," Soos Ramirez said as he stood in front of a large group of tourists in the museum of the Mystery Shack. He walked over in front of a red curtain and grabbed a hold of the pull string. "Then you dudes are gonna get a kick out of this brand new attraction we have today!"

The tourists looked attentive at everything Soos was presenting to them and only seemed to grow more intrigued with what the new attraction supposedly was.

"It's scary. It's evil. And it will get you if you aren't careful," Soos built up, grabbing the pull string with his second hand. "Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you…"

Soos pulled down the string, lifting the red curtain up. There was a white pedestal and right on top of it, sat a dead flower.

"...the Tarantulip!" Soos presented with excitement.

The crowd looked at the dead flower with confused and unfazed looks.

"Um, it just looks like a dead flower," a random tourist in the crowd spoke out.

"You're very right, my dude," Soos told him. "It  _looks_ like a dead flower. But the thing about the Tarantulip is that it's actually a cursed flower that when touched by someone, it'll inflict that person with the pain of a tarantula bite!"

The crowd's unfazed looks devolved into angry looks. They started booing Soos, who started looking nervous.

"Fraud!" a random voice from the crowd shouted.

"We want our money back!" shouted another.

"It's just a dead flower!" shouted yet another.

"C'mon dudes," Soos said with a sweat, trying to calm down the crowd. "It's real! I'm telling you!"

An angry teen with long blonde hair stepped from the crowd. "Oh really? It just looks to us that you're trying to scam us by presenting a regular dead flower as some cursed object."

"No, dude," Soos defended. "That's not at all what I'm trying to do!"

"So you're saying that if I touch this flower, I'll receive the pain of a tarantula bite?" the blonde teen pressed, still not believing it.

"Yeah, that's exactly what will happen," Soos said, scratching the back of his head. "But I strongly advise you not to do that, dude. You'll regret it."

"Hah!" the teen chuckled, sticking out his hand. "Will I now?"

"Don't do it, dude!" Soos warned.

"Cut the game, fraud," the teen said, bringing his hand closer to the flower. "We all know that this is nothing but a big scam. And we all know that as soon as I touch this flower, there won't be a tarantul-AHHHHHHHHHH!"

The teen started screaming as he held his hand in the air after touching the flower. He threw himself on the floor and started rolling around, sticking his affected hand out as he continued screaming. His hand looked perfectly normal and unmarked as if nothing happened, but the teen's reaction said otherwise.

"IT'S NOT FAKE! IT'S REAL! THE PAIN IS REAL!" the teen exclaimed in between his screams. "THIS IS THE SINGLE MOST PAINFUL THING I'VE EVER EXPERIENCED IN MY LIFE!"

The rest of the tourists appeared horrified as they watched the teen roll around on the floor in pain. Some tourists covered up their kids' eyes. Soos watched the teen roll around, unfazed.

"DON'T TOUCH IT! I'M TELLING YOU! DON'T TOUCH THE TARANTULIP! I REGRET EVERYTHING!" the teen shouted, getting up from the floor. He looked around frantically before noticing the exit of the museum, proceeding to run right out of the museum as he continued to scream in pain. He ran straight out the door of the gift shop and away from the Shack.

The terrified crowd of tourists were left with Soos in the museum, watching the teen run off. When he was out of sight, they silently turned back toward Soos, still maintaining their terrified looks.

"I tried to warn him," Soos shrugged.

The crowd began screaming as they ran for the exit of the museum. They started running through the gift shop as well. They all suddenly paused right in front of Abuelita, who held out a tray of cookies in front of them.

"Would any of you queridos like a complimentary Mystery Shack cookie?" she offered to the tourists. She then took out an empty sack with her other hand. "Only five dollars per cookie on your way out."

The terrified looks of the tourists suddenly shifted to content and cheerful looks.

"That's a great deal!" a tourist exclaimed happily.

"Agreed!" another tourist concurred.

"I like cookies!" another tourist exclaimed.

In a single file line, each tourist happily took a cookie from Abuelita's tray and placed their money in the bag she held out as they left the Mystery Shack. As the last tourists left the Shack, Soos walked up beside Abuelita and watched as the tourists left.

"Come again soon, dudes!" he shouted with a wave. He then closed the door. Not a moment later, there's a knock on the door.

Soos opened the door, revealing the blonde teen who had touched the flower earlier.

"Did they buy it?" he asked normally. "Was I convincing enough?"

"You sure were, my dude!" Soos exclaimed. The teen smiled and chuckled as the two high fived. "Nice going, Ryland!"

"Right on, man!" Ryland exclaimed as he walked inside. "I wasn't a hundred percent sure what you meant when you told me to scream in the most terrifying way possible, so I tested a bunch of different terrifying screams beforehand and settled on that one."

"Well, that was the one, dude!" Soos praised as he closed the door behind him. "That's a wrap, everyone!" Soos shouted. He turned to Abuelita and took a leftover cookie from her tray. He took a bite and made a satisfied noise. "Great work with the cookies as always, Abuelita."

"Aye, Soos. There is nothing I wouldn't do to help you succeed with your business," she said, walking off with the tray of cookies.

Suddenly the door to the living room opened up, with Melody peeking her head inside. "Soos, dear, did you just say you wrapped up?"

"I sure did, sweetie," Soos confirmed as he walked up to her. "Today was a great day!"

"Well I'm happy about that," Melody said, smiling. She then took out a couple of papers from her back pocket. "But, sweetie, I just got our business report for last month and I think we need to talk about it."

"Wait, that's a wrap?" Ryland asked Soos, intervening the conversation. "Didn't we just open?"

"Yeah, we're closing early today," Soos confirmed, disregarding his conversation with Melody. "Today is the day that Dipper and Mabel finally come back from Piedmont to hang with us for the summer!"

"What?" a voice from the back called. Wendy Corduroy then popped from the living room and joined the three. "Soos, you never told me they were coming back today!"

"I thought I did last week!" Soos told her. "Remember last week's meeting? Wait, were you even there?"

"Umm, yeah!" Wendy said, her voice sounding somewhat unsure. "I totally didn't oversleep that day and miss it. Disregarding that last point, Dipper and Mabel are coming back today? That's awesome."

"I'm kinda out of the loop," Ryland intervened. "Who are Dipper and Mabel again?"

"Oh, right," Wendy said, remembering how Ryland never met the Pines before. "Dipper and Mabel are friends of ours that we haven't seen in like four years. They're some of the coolest people we've ever met."

"And if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have ever met Melody," Soos said, placing his arm around Melody, causing her to blush.

"I have to admit," Melody began. "I don't particularly know them that well either, but they seem like great kids. It'll be nice to have time to get to know them."

"Oh man, you guys are gonna love them," Wendy stated, sitting on top of the counter. "How old are they now? Like sixteen?"

"I think so. Man, how time flies," he said. He turned back toward Ryland. "But yeah, we're closing up early so we can get ready to pick them up when they get here later. So you can go home early if you want, dude"

"Eh, I think I'll hang back here," Ryland told him. "If I head home now, my parents will force me to watch over my annoying little brother. I'll just keep working on the broken security camera in the back."

Ryland went back into the museum, leaving the others back in the gift shop.

"Soos, since we're closing up early, can we please talk about our business report now?" Melody asked, raising the papers in her hand again.

"We'll talk about it later, sweetie," Soos dismissed. "For now, we have to prepare the place up for Dipper and Mabel's return. I've been waiting four years to see those dudes again. We gotta make sure this place is ready when they get here."

Melody sighed disappointedly. "Alright. Later then." She looked at the papers once more before she walked back into the living room.

"Man, I still can't believe it's been four years since that summer," Wendy said, thinking back to the summer of 2012. "It's still the best summer I've ever had. And with how boring it's been here since then, this summer is probably gonna be just as awesome when they get back. Especially now that they're older. They gotta be old enough for Rated R movies now, right?"

"I don't know, dude," Soos said. "Either way, watching Rated R movies sounds kinda extreme for them, don't you think?"

"Soos, have you forgotten this is Dipper and Mabel we're talking about?" Wendy asked. "They broke into a convenience store, took on a shapeshifting monster, and went through the apocalypse. I'll be damned if they can't handle Rated R movies after all this time. Besides, I started watching them when I was only ten."

"Oh, really?" Soos asked. "Huh, that explains a lot."

Wendy raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, um, nothing!" Soos frantically corrected. "I just meant that explains why you're so messed up and reckless." Immediately realizing what he had said, Soos covered his mouth.

"What?!" Wendy exclaimed, face growing angry.

"I mean, uh, I better go upstairs and prepare Dipper and Mabel's room upstairs," Soos said frantically, racing for the living room door, opening it and closing it behind him.

Wendy rolled her eyes before sitting herself back in the seat behind the counter. She kicked her legs on top of it as she grabbed a magazine to read, simultaneously thinking about Dipper and Mabel's upcoming return.

* * *

"Dipper, wake up!"

Dipper's eyes popped open and he found himself glaring at Mabel once again, who was standing in the middle of the bus aisle with her bags and Waddles beside her. Behind them were a bunch of different passengers exiting the bus through the rear exit.

"What happened?" he asked, rubbing his eyes. "Are we in Gravity Falls?"

"Not yet," Mabel told him. "We have to get off the bus."

"What? Why?" Dipper asked, confused.

"I don't know. They said there's a problem with the engine or something," Mabel explained. "They're telling everyone to get off and get a transfer."

"Great," Dipper said sarcastically as he rubbed his eyes again. "How much longer do we have anyway?"

"About three hours," Mabel said, checking the time on her phone.

"Well, nothing else we can do, I guess," Dipper said, standing up from his seat and grabbing his own bags.

The two exited through the rear exit of the bus and made their way to the bus station doors with their things. Being the last two off the bus, the door behind them closed and the bus began driving off. Dipper turned around and sure enough, there was smoke coming from the back of the bus where the engine was located, accompanied by some very unnatural clanking noises as the bus drove off into one of the repair garages on the other side of the bus station.

"Uh, Dipper?" Mabel called back to him.

Dipper turned back and followed her into the station. He found her stood in front of a large monitor that displayed bus information.

"What's this?" he asked as he looked at the monitor.

"The bus schedule. Look," she said, pointing to a line on the screen that read 'Gravity Falls - Arrival: 11:00 AM'.

"11 o' clock?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Drat! It's only 10:15," Mabel read aloud from the corner of the same screen where the time was displayed.

"Relax," Dipper placated. He sat comfortably in an empty row of seats. "It's only forty-five minutes. It's not even that long of a wait."

"I know. It's just such an inconvenience," Mabel said, trying to cool off her frustration. "I mean out of all the times we rode the bus to and from school, we never had a problem. How is it that the day we finally go back to Gravity Falls, something as dumb as the engine breaking down happens halfway through our trip back? Is our luck that bad?" she asked. She suddenly gasped. "Maybe there's an unstoppable force that doesn't want us to return to Gravity Falls and has been delaying us each summer!"

"Mabel, it's just a bad bus engine," Dipper said with an unamused facepalm.

"Or is it?"

"It is."

"Or  _is it_?"

"Mabel, there's no 'unstoppable force' preventing us from coming to Gravity Falls," Dipper replied nonchalantly. "Seriously, I get you wanna get back to Gravity Falls as soon as possible, but can you just chill a little bit?"

Mabel glumly slumped herself down in the seat beside Dipper. "I'm trying, Dipper. It's just that it's been almost four years. I just wanna see the Shack again. I wanna walk around the town and see my friends again. I wanna eat those stupidly fattening yet delicious burritos from Hermanos Brothers again." She tilted over on her side and faced away from him. "I'm just tired of waiting already."

"I am too," Dipper said in a consoling voice. "But all I can say is to just, you know, hang in there a bit longer. We're almost there."

Despite Dipper's efforts to comfort her with his cheap words of wisdom, he was unsuccessful at even getting her to smile. He visibly thought for a moment before looking through the window and spotting a sign for a Hermanos Brothers restaurant right across the street from the bus station.

"Well, you know, Hermanos Brothers isn't exactly exclusive to Gravity Falls," Dipper said with a smile.

Mabel turned her head around. "Huh?"

Dipper pointed to the Hermanos Brothers across the street, directing her attention toward it.

She gasped in disbelief. "Hermanos Brothers!"

"Maybe they're not a thing in California, but they're surely a thing in Oregon," Dipper said.

"Well, what're we waiting for?" Mabel asked as she stood up from her chair excitedly. "We have forty-five minutes to kill. Let's go!"

"Hang on," Dipper halted. "I'll go real quick and get your food. You stay here and request transfers to the next bus to Gravity Falls for us."

"What? Why can't we both go? Or if one of us has to stay, why can't it be you?" Mabel asked.

"Because there's a line for transfers here and there's probably a line over there," he explained, gesturing toward Hermanos Brothers. "Also you're extremely picky when it comes to ordering food and can never make up your mind right away."

"Am not!" Mabel defended. "I already said I wanted a burrito. Although come to think of it, I'm also craving one of their beef enchiladas. Wait, no! Their chicken quesadillas! Wait, no, the burrito sounds good again...okay, you have a point."

"Uh-huh," Dipper said, smirking at his proven point. He turned around and started walking back toward the exit. "Anyway, you get in that line and request the transfers like I said. I'll go get your burrito."

"Wait, get the chicken quesadilla instead!" she called out as Dipper walked out of the station. Wait no! The beef enchilada! Wait, the quesadilla again! No, the burrito! Get the burrito! Actually, wait! They have fajitas too! Get the fajitas!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to artmageddonunicorn for the wonderful Ryland design. It's about how I pictured him when writing.


	4. Return to the Falls: Part 2

"Order 617!" one of the Hermanos Brothers cashiers called out, placing a tray of tacos out on the front counter.

Dipper stood to the side against a wall inside the restaurant, arms crossed as he watched the long line of people waiting to order their food. In his hand, he held a receipt for the food he ordered for Mabel, which she had finally decided on beef enchiladas before he left. The restaurant was pretty busy that day, and he had been waiting for his order for approximately fifteen minutes already. Not that he was necessarily bothered, considering he did have forty-five minutes to kill before the new bus to Gravity Falls arrived. Although at the same time, he was growing somewhat impatient with how long he's been having to wait at a restaurant he doesn't particularly enjoy as much as Mabel does.

The man with order 617 grabbed his tray of tacos from the counter and stared at them with a ravenous look. The man then stuffed his face and began to gorge the tacos as he walked toward his table while Dipper watched in disgust.

 _How do people eat this stuff?_  Dipper thought to himself. He's never been a particular fan of tacos. There was something about them that always made him feel uncomfortable when he thought about them. He wasn't sure what it was. He then shook his head, trying to get himself not to think too hard about it.

"Excuse me?"

Dipper turned to see an old man, presumably in his late sixties to early seventies.

The man held an empty cup in his hand. "Can you please move over just a bit? You're the way of the soda fountains."

Dipper looked behind him and realized that he was, indeed, stood in front of the drink fountains.

"Oops, sorry, sir," Dipper said as he stood out of the way. "Didn't realize I was in the way."

"It's no problem, thanks," the man said with a smile.

Dipper leaned against another spot on the wall, ensuring he wasn't in the way of anything. The man had begun to fill up his cup with soda and glanced back at Dipper for a split second. However, he suddenly turned back and stared at him again, this time with an analytical look. He scanned Dipper from head to toe and narrowed his eyes, pausing himself from filling up his cup.

"Hey, have we met?" the man asked him.

Dipper looked back over at him and quickly scanned him back, but found no recognizable traits to him. He shook his head. "Um, no, I don't believe so."

"You look familiar. I feel like I've seen you before," the man claimed. Dipper realized the man wasn't saying so in a particularly friendly way either.

"I'm sorry, but you may be confusing me with someone else," Dipper replied in the kindest way he could think of.

"Wait a minute!" the man suddenly exclaimed, realizing something. The man's eyebrows tilted angrily. "You're the kid that stole and trashed my car last week!"

"Wait, what?" Dipper said, holding his hands up defensively. "Dude, I've never ever seen you before in my life! And this is my first time in this town!"

"You liar!" the man blurted. "I remember you! I was getting the mail and I saw you break into my car! You tried to drive off but you crashed into a tree and then ran off into the woods! You think wearing a different hat would make it so I couldn't tell who you were?"

Dipper had no idea what the man was talking about. He had a feeling that based on the man's age, he had to have been getting confused for a similar looking person. Looking around, he saw that the man's shouting was attracting the attention of the other customers and staff. Everywhere Dipper looked, there were people looking at him.

"Sir, this has to be a misunderstanding!" Dipper stated. "I swear I've never stolen anyone's car!"

"Hang on a second!" a woman holding a child's hand intervened. "That's the same boy who stole and crashed my car!"

"What the-?" Dipper said, left eye twitching. He's now being accused of committing a crime he didn't commit by two different people.

"It's because of  _you_ that I now can't drive my child to school!" the woman exclaimed tearfully. "Now I have to send him to school in a bus! A  _BUS_!"

"Wait, my car was stolen and crashed last night!" another man claimed, standing up from his booth seat. "That means it must've been you!"

"No! That's the exact opposite of what that means!" Dipper shouted, dumbfounded by the third accuser's poor logic.

"He crashed my car too!" a woman in line shouted.

"Mine too!" a man also in line shouted.

Suddenly, just about every adult in the restaurant broke out into a series of claiming their car was stolen and crashed. Dipper was absolutely floored by the situation at hand and all of the accusations of the same crime.

"Somebody, call the police!" the first man who accused Dipper demanded. "He's a criminal!"

Everyone began to crowd together around Dipper and corner him, shouting various different things to the point where Dipper couldn't even make out what any one person said anymore. However, he realized there was no way to convince anyone of his innocence anymore with such a big crowd of people against him and him not having anything to show for himself.

All of the sudden, a cashier rung a call bell a few times, silencing the crowd of people. Everyone's attention drew toward the cashier. The cashier stared at everyone silently, looking as if he had no clue what all the commotion was all about. He then placed a brown take-out bag onto the counter.

"Um," he awkwardly began. "Order 618?"

Dipper remembered 618 being his number. He smiled awkwardly to the crowd before squeezing through them and quickly running up to the counter to grab his order.

"Thank you!" he told the cashier. He then bolted around the crowd and burst straight through the main doors, leaving the restaurant.

As he stood outside, he looked around quickly. He knew he needed to get back to the bus station, but he couldn't go there just yet, in fear of the crowd chasing him there. He needed to divert their attention.

Before he can think of a way to do so, the crowd burst through the door behind him.

"There he is!" a man shouted.

Dipper began to sprint away from the crowd, whom promptly began to chase after him. As he ran as fast he as he could, he tried to think of how he was gonna lose the crowd. Ahead of him, he spotted a white brick wall, the open woods directly behind it. Knowing this, he suddenly had an idea. He turned around him and quickly verified the current distance between him and the crowd. He glanced back ahead of him and ran around the corner of the white brick wall.

The crowd chased him around the corner and continued straight down the sidewalk, completely unaware that Dipper had actually changed course and began running into the woods.

After running for a brief moment, Dipper stopped in his tracks. These woods were dark and he didn't want to run too far into them and lose track of where he is. Out of breath, he promptly dropped to his knees. He turned to look behind himself and realized that his plan had actually worked. He smiled as he panted.

"Yes! I lost them!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Nice to know that cartoonish plans of action still work."

He got up from his knees, balancing himself with a nearby tree, as his legs were still tired from all the running. He turned his head down and shut his eyes as he continued to pant, still trying to catch his breath again.

However, he soon felt a warmth in front of him. He opened his eyes and looked up in front of him to see a tall man in a large trench coat and a hood, coated by the darkness of the woods. Dipper's eyes bulged at the sight of the man. Panicked, he screamed and fell backward on his rear and backed up.

"Please!" Dipper pleaded. "I swear! I didn't steal anyone's cars! It was someone else! Not me!"

"Calm down, man," the man said in a somewhat familiar voice, causing Dipper to become a lot less panicked. "Sheesh, and I thought you'd be a lot less of a wuss after all this time."

"Excuse me?" Dipper asked. He got up from the ground and brushed off the back of his pants with his hands. "Do I know you?"

"Yeah," the man said, unbuttoning his trench coat. "Both of us."

Dipper raised an eyebrow at this. The man took off his trench coat, only to reveal he's not a man, but two boys, one stacked on top of the other to form a single figure, both boys wearing yellow raincoats. Dipper's eyes bulged once he realized that these boys were two twelve-year-old versions of himself. They both wore his old pine tree hat, except instead of pine trees, they read numbers. The top Dipper had a '3' and the bottom Dipper had a '4'.

"'3'? '4'?" Dipper read aloud. He suddenly realized they were his old clones from the party at the Mystery Shack where he made them because he wanted to dance with Wendy. "My old clones?!"

"That's right," 3 confirmed as he jumped down from 4's shoulders. "We're clones 3 and 4. Although we now refer to ourselves as Tracey and Quattro."

"Oh yeah, I remember," Dipper said as he continued to think about it. "Last time I saw you guys, you two ran off when I found you two in my closet after the party."

"You had a Pitt Cola can in your hand!" Quattro exclaimed, poking Dipper in the chest. "You were gonna murder us like you murdered the others!"

"What? No, I wasn't!" Dipper defended, holding his arms out. "I was happy to see you two! If you guys stayed, we could've hung out and done some cool things together that summer! I could've protected you two from getting destroyed!"

"Uh-huh, sure," Quattro said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

"Oh yeah?" Dipper said, raising an eyebrow. "Well, if I remember correctly, you two were going to try to lock me up in my own closet forever and take over my life so you guys could be with Wendy."

"What? No, we weren't!" Quattro defended.

"Uh-huh, sure," Dipper mocked, also mimicking the eye roll.

"Anyways," Tracey intervened. "We're past the whole Wendy thing now. It's been four years. We've moved on. We've grown up."

"Really?" Dipper said. "You two still look twelve to me."

"Hey, paper doesn't grow!" Tracey said. "Look, we have other goals now. Rather than pining after Wendy forever, we decided that we wanted to do more worthwhile things with our lives."

"We're going to travel the world!" Quattro exclaimed excitedly, with Tracey nodding in agreement.

"Really now?" Dipper asked skeptically. "What exactly are you doing only hours away from Gravity Falls after all this time then?"

"Well, when we first ran off in the woods, we ran pretty far from Gravity Falls," Tracey explained. "We also acquired these abandoned raincoats along the way to help protect us from the rain. And this nice trench coat for fashion sense."

"We had spent about a year roaming the woods of Oregon before we decided we wanted to see new sights and new lands," Quattro explained further. "But obviously, traveling the world isn't exactly a cheap task. However, because we also had your knowledge of the Shack's tools and supplies, we realized that the Shack had just what we needed to build something that can take us all over the world."

Tracey took out a rolled up piece of paper from the inside of his raincoat. He unrolled it and showed it to Dipper. The paper showed a picture of a hot air balloon, with Tracey and Quattro drawn standing inside the basket, smiling.

"You guys are gonna build a hot air balloon?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow at the grand scale of the plan.

"Yep!" Tracey nodded happily. "And the Mystery Shack has the exact materials we need to construct it."

"Rip-stop polyester and nylon, Palembang canes, stainless steel, propane tanks, a burner, and Mabel's sewing machine," Quattro listed.

"So you guys are just trying to find your way back to the Mystery Shack?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah, we've tried to walk back in the direction we came from, but Quattro got the directions wrong and got us lost," Tracey said, eyeballing Quattro.

"Hey! You're the one who confused the word East with West!" Quattro defended.

"That was you, Quattro! That was all you!" Tracey scolded. Quattro lowered his head and crossed his arms guiltily. Tracey turned back to Dipper. "Anyways, since then, we've tried different ways of heading back. We followed roads, but they led us nowhere. We rode the bus, but we got banned from riding them for not paying. We stole cars, but we can't drive and kept crashing every one we stole. We-"

"Hold on," Dipper stopped. "You guys are the ones who stole and crashed cars from the people of this town? And that's why I'm getting blamed for it?"

"Yeah, we're sorry about that," Quattro awkwardly apologized. "Two people coordinating to drive a single car isn't exactly the easiest thing."

"Yes, it is, Quattro!" Tracey scolded. "You're just terrible at it! The brake is the left pedal, the gas is the right. What's not to get about that?!"

"Well, you're the one who can't steer properly!" Quattro exclaimed back.

Dipper sighed in annoyance and then began to walk away from the two. "Look, I have a bus that leaves in a few. I gotta catch it before that crowd finds me again."

"Wait! Don't go!" Tracey pleaded.

"We need your help!" Quattro added.

"With what?" Dipper asked, stopping to turn back to them.

"Getting back to the Shack," Tracey said. "We can only assume you're going to take that bus to Gravity Falls, right?"

"Um, yeah," Dipper answered.

"Well, you see, we're banned from buses individually in this area," Tracey explained. "But if we use our trench coat tactic to look like one person, we can get away with it unrecognized. We need you to help us get on that bus so we can come to Gravity Falls."

"And how exactly am I going to be able to do that?" Dipper asked.

Tracey and Quattro looked at one another for a moment before looking back at Dipper, who's waiting for an answer.

"We have a plan," Quattro stated.

"And we think it's the only way that will get us on that bus successfully," Tracey added.

"Alright, let's hear it," Dipper asked.

* * *

Mabel paced around back and forth at the bus station. Waddles sat still on the ground, watching her pace around. The time was 10:55 AM. The bus to Gravity Falls is estimated to arrive in about five minutes. There was no sign of Dipper since he went across the street to Hermanos Brothers and she was getting anxious by the fact he isn't back yet and their bus is almost there.

"C'mon, Dipper," she said anxiously. "How long does it take to order a meal? And he says that  _I_  take too long…"

"Mabel!" Dipper's voice called out behind her.

"Dip-" she began enthusiastically, before pausing at what she saw in front of her. "-per…"

As Dipper walked up to her, she immediately noticed him wearing a giant trench coat, and Wendy's hat wrapped around the top of his head abnormally. The trench coat itself managed to cover him up from his feet all the way to his chin. Even Waddles turned his head in confusion upon looking at him.

"Here I am," he told her. He then held out the Hermanos Brothers take-out bag to her. "Here's your food. Sorry for taking so long. That line was  _crazy_  long."

"Thanks," she said, casually accepting the bag from his hand, although she was too busy scanning his appearance to care about the food she just received. "But, uh, what's with the, uh…"

"Oh, this?" he said, noticing her looking at his trench coat. "Uh, someone just gave it to me. No cost! Can you believe that? Makes me look pretty mysterious, doesn't it?"

"Makes you look like an even bigger dork than normal," she said, chuckling at her own joke.

"Haha," he laughed sarcastically. "Very f _UN_ ny." His voice had cracked, and he covered up his mouth out of shock.

"Did your voice just crack?" Mabel asked, clearly trying not to laugh.

"Um, no," Dipper replied, trying to cover himself up. It didn't help though, as Mabel burst out laughing anyway.

"Wow! I haven't heard a voice crack like that from you since you were twelve," Mabel exclaimed as laughed.

Dipper's eyebrows lowered in annoyance as he watched Mabel continue to laugh on at him. "Alright, alright. Enough. Are we good for the bus?"

Mabel wiped a tear from her eye as she calmed down from her laughter. "Yeah, I got the transfers like you told me to do. Mabel's got us covered!"

"Great," Dipper said. "I guess we just wait for the bus to show up now."

"Yep," Mabel agreed as she took her phone out. "By the way, is your phone dead or something? I called you like five times while I was waiting for you to get back and you never answered."

Dipper stared at her blankly for a second. "I have a phone?"

Mabel stared back at him for a moment, somewhat put off by his question. "Um, yeah? The new one mom got you?"

"Um...uh…" Dipper said as he patted his hands around his trench coat. His phone then randomly popped out from the inside of his collar. "Ah, there it is!" He grabbed it with his hand and examined it. "Gee, this is fancy."

"Feeling extra dorky today, aren't you?" Mabel teased, crossing her arms.

"Pfft, what makes you say that?" Dipper asked, examining the features or his phone. His eyes suddenly bulged. "Woah! This thing takes HD photos!"

Mabel raised an eyebrow, somewhat weirded out by his strange behavior. " _Yeeaahh_ , well, I hope you don't mind, but I'll be sitting somewhere else on the bus this time around." She turned back around and walked away with Waddles following her, leaving Dipper on his own, staring at and tapping his phone.

"Is she gone?" a voice whispered to Dipper.

"What?" Dipper said, distracted by the phone.

"Get off the phone, Quattro!" the voice told him.

"Tracey, you have no idea how cool this thing is," Quattro said as he continued to browse the phone's applications. "It's got so many features on it. Not bad, Dipper Prime."

"Put that thing away! You're going to blow our cover! She's already onto your stupid prepubescent voice!" Tracey scolded.

"Hey, you have the same stupid prepubescent voice!" Quattro defended.

"It's things like this that explain why I'm always on top," Tracey said, annoyed. "But no, you just  _had_  to be the one this time. Now if we make Mabel any more suspicious, we're totally gonna get caught."

"Relax. We're not gonna get caught by Mabel," Quattro said confidently. "Dipper Prime was the only one who could possibly catch us and we already took care of him."

Tracey relaxed a bit with Quattro's reassurance. He grinned. "You're right. With him out of the way, what do we have to worry about?"

"Ourselves," Quattro told him.

"No, only  _you_ ," Tracey disparaged, causing Quattro to frown at his contempt toward him.

* * *

Dipper's eyes slowly opened as he woke up from an unexpected slumber. He felt dizzy and disoriented. As his eyes began to readjust, he looked at his surroundings and found he was still in the forest, sat against a tree.

"What the…?" he said, confused, eyes still adjusting.

He tried to move but suddenly realized his arms were tied behind his back. This realization caused him to start panicking. He tried to kick his feet around but saw that his feet were also tied up. Both his arms and legs tied up with rope. His bare also head felt somewhat bare, and he came to one last realization his hat was missing.

He remembered the last thing he did before knocking out was talking with Tracey and Quattro about a plan on how they can get back to Gravity Falls. It was at the moment that he realized that he had been betrayed by the two. They had knocked him out, tied him up, and stole his hat so they could take his spot with Mabel on the bus back to Gravity Falls, leaving him stranded in the woods of a town near the Oregon-California state border, something that he feels he should've seen coming long ago.

"No..." Dipper said, in denial of his current situation. "Tracey...Quattro...dammit!"

He kept trying to move around and free himself from the constraints of the ropes, but it led to no avail. He only struggled and didn't have the strength to simply break loose from the thick and tightly tied ropes. He wasn't sure what time it was or how long he had been knocked out, but he knew he needed to get free as soon as possible. Struggling wasn't helping, so he was left with the only other option he thought he had.

"HELP!" he cried out into the forest. "SOMEONE HELP ME!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to ArtyLovr for doing the fanart for this chapter.


	5. Return to the Falls: Part 3

"HELP! SOMEBODY?! ANYBODY?!"

Dipper's cries for help have gone on for a solid minute, and considering the bus to Gravity Falls could be arriving or departing any moment now, he doesn't have the time to be waiting around any longer for help. He continued to pull his arms and legs apart from one another with his own strength in an attempt to break the ropes apart, but his struggles to free himself only led to no success.

Frustrated, he slumped himself back against a tree. He thought about Tracey and Quattro. He doesn't recall being nearly as malicious when he was twelve-years-old as those two were, considering they're basically exact copies of himself at that age, mentally and physically, but made of paper. He also found it kind of humiliating that he was overpowered and outsmarted by two younger clones himself. Almost as if he learned nothing from his last run-in with them. He knows that he should've expected this a mile away.

"Think, Dipper," he told himself. "There's gotta be some way to get out of this. Think of yourself when you first made those clones. What did you know then? What have you learned to do since then?"

Dipper thought for a moment. The night of the party when he made the clones in the first place was near the beginning of that summer. So he thought of everything that he had done later that summer. Everything he had learned to do. The people who had taught him things. Who probably knew best about getting out of tied up situations?

Stan.

Of course. Stan was basically a criminal. He must've gotten out of many of these situations before. He had been handcuffed and arrested for his crimes several times, even referring to some of these experiences occasionally in front of him and Mabel.

Dipper began to remember one of Stan's said experiences. An incident that he shared where he had been arrested for one of his scams. He had said that the cops had to pull over a speeding driver and he was left alone back. While no one was looking, he took his cuffed hands behind his back and brought them under and over his legs. While he was still cuffed, he had managed to get his arms in front of him again and was able to manage himself a bit better as he made his escape from the car.

"That's it!" Dipper exclaimed, the memory fresh in his head again. He had never done this himself before, but he had an idea on how to do it. He realizes that this isn't an original idea by Stan himself, but it was him that exposed him to the idea in the first place.

He pressed his back against the tree and tried to lift his rear off the ground by pressing his restricted legs among the ground. Once in position, he brought his arms underneath his leg. He sat on the ground again and placed his hands against the back of his feet. Then he slid his hands out in front of him as he lifted his feet up.

"Yes!" Dipper exclaimed at his success. With his hands in front of his, he promptly began to untie the ropes wrapped around his legs, internally thanking Grunkle Stan for sharing his arrested stories to him and Mabel.

A quick moment later, Dipper freed his legs from the ropes. He stood up from the ground and stretched each leg out. He then looked down at his hands, which were still tied up.

_Now, how am I gonna get out of this?_

He looked around at his surroundings, searching for anything that might be able to assist him. Eventually, he spotted a tree stump with some sharp protruding edges. He quickly walked over to it and rubbed the ropes on his hands back and forth against the sharp edges in a sawing motion. He could feel himself cutting through the ropes little by little the more he sawed.

A few seconds later, he felt the ropes cut loose, freeing his hands. He rubbed his wrists from the discomfort the constrictions but smiled at the fact that he managed to successfully free himself. His face then turned serious once he remembered the current stakes of the ongoing situation. He began to run toward the light of the outside that barely illuminated the dark woods he had stood within.

As soon as he stepped out of the woods, he immediately spotted the bus station across the street from him. Needing to know what time it was, he dived into his pocket for his phone. However, he quickly realized it wasn't there.

"Where's my phone?" he asked himself aloud as he began to pat himself down for it. His panicked face then shifted to one of aggravation. "God damn Tracey and Quattro…"

Coming to terms with the fact that the two had stolen just about everything but the clothes on his body, he simply brushed it to the side, only letting it reinforce his will to get back at them when he has the chance later.

He then looked at the street in front of him, seeing that there are too many cars passing by, forcing him to have to wait before he can cross. Just as he leaned against the traffic light post, he noticed a bus pulling into the station. He squinted and was able to quickly catch the destination sign on the front of the bus, which read 'Gravity Falls'. Upon reading the sign, Dipper's heart dropped. He frantically pressed the 'Push for Walk' button as rapidly as he could.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!"

Eventually, the light changed and the red stop indicator changed to the blue walk indicator. Dipper quickly ran across the street and up to the front of the bus station as fast as he could.

"MABEL!" he shouted as he ran up to the station, hoping to somehow get Mabel's attention by calling her name from afar. "MABEL! WAIT UP!"

"THERE HE IS!" a voice called out.

Dipper stopped running as he turned his head to the side of the station, eyes bulging once he noticed that it was the crowd of people from Hermanos Brothers that had chased him before. They were still grouped together and had obviously noticed him.

"GET HIM!" a woman in the crowd shouted. As demanded, the crowd began to run after him again.

The crowd was basically in front of Dipper, and so there was no way he'd be able to keep running toward the station without them intercepting him. Despite wishing he didn't have to run away again, he knew he had to try and run back.

However, as soon as he turned to run, he immediately bumped into someone, causing him to fall to the ground. He looked up and noticed a police officer.

"Sorry officer," Dipper apologized as he stood himself back up. However, as he tried to run past him, the officer grabbed him by the arm.

"Where do you think you're going, son?" the police officer asked, raising an eyebrow. "You think I don't know who you are or what you've done?"

As the crowd caught up and reached the two, Dipper felt his face pale. The officer had also believed him to be responsible for Tracey and Quattro's car crimes.

"Look, you guys don't understand!" Dipper tried to explain. "It sounds crazy but there are these two kids that both look exactly like me when I was twelve that are pretending to look like an older person that stole and crashed all your cars! He's inside that station! If you follow me, I can show you guys!"

"I think we've heard enough, kid," the officer dismissed, unconvinced by his story. "We've been looking for you for days. When we got the call from someone saying that you were actually running around town in pure daylight for once-"

"THAT WAS ME!" a random man in the crowd shouted, interrupting the officer.

The officer cleared his throat and pretended to ignore the man. "Anyways, when we got the call, we knew this was our chance to finally catch you once and for all. And so it looks as though we have. You're going to jail, son."

The crowd began to cheer. With his last bits of hope completely destroyed, Dipper sighed defeatedly. He couldn't run anymore. The bus to Gravity Falls had already pulled into the station and Mabel would be going back with Tracey and Quattro in his place. And he knew there was nothing he could do about it.

* * *

"Transfer bus to Gravity Falls!" the bus driver announced as he opened the bus doors.

Mabel grabbed her bags and stepped onto the bus, with Waddles following right behind her. The bus driver noticed Waddles and raised an eyebrow.

"Hey kid!" he called out to Mabel. "What's with the pig?"

Mabel turned back to the driver. "Oh, he's my pet pig, Waddles! You see, I got him back at a fair held by my Grunkle-"

"Kid, I mean why's he on my bus?" he interrupted.

"Oh, well, how else is he gonna come with me to Gravity Falls?"

"Pigs ain't allowed on my bus."

"Alright, no problem," Mabel sighed, picking Waddles up and walking to the front of the bus. "But I'm not responsible for my Grunkles hunting you down when they find out you forced me to leave him behind."

The bus driver raised an eyebrow. "Are you threatening me?"

Mabel stepped outside of the bus with Waddles and turned back at him. "The only person threatening you is yourself, mister."

The way Mabel spoke to the bus driver was very static and almost monotone, which imposed fear on him. He didn't quite understand what Mabel was implying exactly, but he wasn't really in a place of wanting to find out either.

"Erm, you know what? Nevermind, you can bring the pig on," the bus driver casually allowed, trying to hide the fear from reaching his voice.

Mabel smiled as she stepped back on the bus with Waddles. "Smart choice."

The bus driver glanced back at her as she walked down the bus aisle. He turned back to the front again and gulped fearfully.

Quattro and Tracey, still disguised as Dipper, walked onto the bus. Quattro held a bag in his left hand while holding Dipper's phone directly in front of his face with his right hand. Tracey walked down the bus aisle somewhat clumsily as he stumbled and failed to maintain proper balance. Quattro was too distracted by the phone to notice Tracey's poor walking. Eventually, they reached a seat on the other side of the aisle from Mabel and sat down. However, Mabel was paying more attention to petting Waddles instead of their odd-looking walking.

After a brief moment, the bus driver closed the doors and began to drive out of the station. Mabel looked up and around the bus, realizing that she and 'Dipper' are the only ones onboard.

"Weird. There were more people on our last bus," she said as she turned to Quattro. She noticed that he was still staring at the phone. "Hah, you're really getting into that phone now, aren't you, Dipper? I thought you didn't care about smartphones?"

Quattro turned to her. "Are you kidding me? This is the best thing I've ever seen! I can't believe these things actually exist! How do they make these things? How can they do so much? I mean, we went from the flip phone to this? How amazing is that?!"

Mabel raised an eyebrow. "Um, you know smartphones have been around for awhile now, right? They're just more mainstream now. And I thought you said that Grunkle Ford's journals were the best thing you've ever seen?"

"Who's Grunkle Fort?" Quattro asked, glancing over at the phone toward at her. "You mean Grunkle Stan?"

"What do you mean...?" Mabel started, confused. "Did you hit your head when you went to Hermanos Brothers?"

"Um…maybe I did?  _OOF_!" Quattro exclaimed painfully all of the sudden. It was as if someone had just punched him in the stomach. "I mean, no! Duh! Of course I know who Grunkle Fort is! I'm not crazy!"

He turned back to his phone, leaving Mabel with a confused look on her face. "Oookay then." She said before turning away from him. She looked out the window as the bus continued to move slowly out of the station.

As she looked out the window, however, she noticed some commotion going on outside. There was a large crowd of people cheering beside a police car. Right next to the car, two officers handcuffed a teen and prepared to put him into the car. Mabel looked closely at the incident and wondered what was going on. The teen looked up at the bus. With a clearer look at his face, Mabel's heart sunk.

 _Dipper?!_  She thought to herself. To her, it couldn't have been, but the teen looked exactly like him, minus the hat. As he looked on at the bus, however, he appears to notice her. He begins to yell something directly at her, but she can't hear anything with windows shut and bus engine running. It looked like he was calling out for her help. As he keeps trying to shout at her, the police begin to force him into the cruiser, shutting the door behind him. From that point, the bus had driven far enough to the point where Mabel couldn't really see him in the vehicle or the rest of the commotion.

She stopped looking out the window and stared straightforward at the back of the bus seat in front of her, horrified. Her head was spinning and she was sick to her stomach. She didn't know what to think or what to do. She knew the teen looked exactly like Dipper, but there's also a Dipper on the bus with her.

She glanced over at 'Dipper', who still stared and played on his phone. She notes his appearance down again, which was a large trench coat and his hat very weirdly wrapped around his head as if he was trying to hide another hat under it. Meanwhile, the Dipper that she saw getting arrested wore the same red shirt and navy blue hoodie combo that he had worn since last year and he didn't have his hat. On top of things, 'Dipper' has been acting very suspicious and strange since he came back from Hermanos Brothers. With all these thoughts going through her head, she narrowed her eyes suspiciously at 'Dipper'.

The bus suddenly parked to the side of a curb. The bus doors opened as the driver stood up from his seat. He looked back at the two down the aisle.

"My shift's over," the driver said. "Y'all just hang here for a sec for the new driver."

The driver stepped off the bus, leaving Mabel and 'Dipper' by themselves. The two sat in silence for a moment, Mabel thinking about how to address things with 'Dipper', while he paid no attention to anything but his phone.

"So, uh, funny story," Mabel began, grabbing Quattro's attention. "I was just staring out the window while the bus was driving and I saw these police guys and, you know, they just happened to be arresting this one guy and that one guy just happened to be a guy that looks almost exactly like you except without the trench coat get-up and the hat and it's kinda funny because it looked like he was screaming at me for help, and I gotta say that he really did look a lot like you but that can't be because you're right here on this bus with me, so that means I'm probably just seeing things, right?"

Quattro stared at Mabel blankly for a good moment, as if he didn't know how to respond. His eyes glanced around the bus. "Um, yeah."

The two stared at each other for a good few seconds in silence before Quattro directed his attention back to the phone, although his face maintained a blank expression. Almost like he was nervous.

"Yeah, I thought so," Mabel said calmly, glancing to the side. Her eyes lit up and she smiled as she looked back at him. "So what are you gonna miss the most about Piedmont?"

"Oh, uh, you know," Quattro began, visibly trying to think of answers. "Mom and dad, of course. Um, video games, books, and uh...high school, is it? Yeah, high school."

"What about Derrick?" Mabel asked casually. "I'm gonna miss him so much."

"Oh, uh, Derrick…" Quattro said nervously, not having a clue who Derrick is. "Yeah, I'll miss him too."

"LIAR!" Mabel exclaimed as she leaped from the other side of the bus and tackled Quattro. "YOU'RE NOT MY BROTHER! THE REAL DIPPER KNOWS THAT I HATE DERRICK!"

"Get off me!" Quattro demanded. Tracey assisted by kicking Mabel off and back to the other side of the bus. Tracey stood the two up, and Quattro got into a fighting stance. "You're losing it, Mabel. It's me, your brother. Isn't my face and voice enough pr _OOF_?" Quattro's voice cracked again, and he promptly covered his mouth in response.

"I knew something was weird when your voice suddenly became squeaky again!"

She lunged for a punch, which Quattro blocked. Tracey walked forward for Quattro to throw a punch back, but Mabel pushed him down the aisle of the bus. Mabel's push, however, sent Quattro flying off of Tracey's shoulders, taking the trench coat along with him, ruining the disguise. At that moment, both Tracey and Quattro were both separately revealed to Mabel.

"What the…?" she asked, eye twitching in confusion and shock.

Tracey turned back toward Quattro, who was lying on the floor of the bus with the trench coat covering him. "Way to go, moron. I knew I shouldn't have let you be up top after the bus station exchange."

"Like you would know that she hates Derrick," Quattro said, tossing the trench coat off of himself.

"Two little Dippers? Well, that explains the prepubescent voice," Mabel snickered.

"You know that you're gonna have to fight two of us now instead of one, right?" Tracey asked, getting into a fighting stance. Quattro promptly stood beside him.

"That's fine. I used to kick Dipper's butt all the time when we were kids," she said, cracking her fingers. "And since I'm sixteen now, kicking both of your butts is gonna be even easier."

Tracey and Quattro jumped up at her, but she quickly punched the two back with ease. Quattro was pushed back against a bus seat, while Tracey was punched to the front of the bus. Mabel grabbed Quattro by the throat and picked him up.

"Tracey!" Quattro choked. "Help me, man!"

Tracey pulled himself off the ground by pulling the gear shift down. He then jumped and grabbed onto Mabel's leg. Unbeknownst to him, however, he had placed the bus in drive when pulling the gear shift, and the bus was now slowly moving forward.

* * *

"I'm excited about my first day back on the job, Dave," a man said to Dave. They both walked down the sidewalk.

"Yeah, but I gotta warn ya, Paul," Dave said. "There's this girl on there with a pet pig. Now ya know we can't allow pets, but this girl...she's scary. Says that if her pig ain't allowed, her Grunkles gonna are gonna git ya. Whatever the hell that means. I ain't taking chances though."

"Gee Dave, when did you become afraid of your own passengers?" Paul asked, chuckling. The two men paused as they stared forward at the slowly accelerating bus moving down the street. "Huh, I thought you said there wasn't a driver?"

"There  _ain't_ a driver!" Dave panicked. "That bus is loose! We needa get help!"

* * *

Dipper sat in the back of the police car, ultimately defeated after everything that has happened to him that day. His hands were once again constrained behind his back, and while he knew how to bring his arms in front of him again, there was an officer in the front passenger seat of the car and the last thing he wanted to do was evoke an even more violent response by the cops for an attempted escape.

The other officer stood outside, checking in with the crowd and filing various reports of car theft and damage that Tracey and Quattro had caused that Dipper himself was now taking the blame for. Once the cop finishes, he'll be driven straight to jail.

He looked outside the window, where he could still see the bus that Mabel and his clones were on begin to drive away. He saw Mabel on the bus when it passed him before and had tried to call out to her, but he wasn't quite sure if she was able to identify him or not. What could she have done anyway? Try to tell the police it wasn't him and that it was a pair of clones pretending to be him? Either way, it probably wouldn't have changed anything. He thought about how she'll be heading to Gravity Falls with a pair of imposters while he'll be sitting in a cell. This is not the way he expected his life to go.

"Holy-!" the officer inside the squad car shouted. Dipper looked over, confused. The officer stepped out of the car and walked up to the officer outside. The window was rolled down so Dipper moved over to listen in on what they were conversing about.

"Alex, we got a report just now that a bus in the area on its way to Gravity Falls has been seen mobile without the attendance of a driver," the police officer that walked out said to the other.

Dipper's eyes bulged. He looked back at the bus through the other window and saw that it was moving at a slow and steady rate, but noticed it was still moving among the curb instead of a lane. As he looked closely at the back window, however, he saw that something was going on inside the bus. He squinted his eyes and suddenly saw Mabel pinning the face of one of the clones against the window.

Dipper gasped.  _She knows_ , he thought as he's barely able to make out the fact that she was fighting the clones, and had likely come to the realization that they weren't really him. It also appears that they are completely unaware of the mobile state of the bus.

He realized he needed to do something, but he wasn't sure what. However, he soon noticed the keys to the handcuffs left behind in the front seat of the car. This particular cruiser didn't have a cage in the back, which meant he could easily access the front if he wanted to. He looked over to the side and noticed the two officers were too distracted talking to one another.

_Man, these guys are almost as awful at being cops as Blubs and Durland are._

He took this as his opportunity to make an escape. Using the same trick he had learned earlier, he pressed his back against his seat and pressed his feet against the back of front passenger seat. Just like before, he slid his arms underneath his rear and then legs, bringing his arms in front of him once again. He quickly dived into the front seat and grabbed the keys. He quickly unlocked the handcuffs and freed his hands, tossing the cuffs and keys to the side. He looked back at the police and the surrounding crowd, who were all still distracted.

Realizing they're all on the left side of the vehicle, he opened the right door of the car and snuck out, silently closing the door behind him. He kept himself crouched down as he crept off, trying his hardest not to be seen by either the police or crowd as he went across the street.

Upon getting to the other side of the street, he got himself into a safe position that was out of the police's sight. He looked back over at the bus, which was driving too far off for him to catch up to on foot.

"Great. How am I gonna catch up to that thing?"

As he looked around the town, he noticed a small car dealership. He ran up to it and checked out the various cars, ranging from old and used to new and luxurious. As he went down the line of cars, something caught his eye.

"Ah ha! Perfect!"

There was a car dealer standing beside a golf cart, talking to a pair of potential customers.

"So with all of that said, let's talk price. How do y'all feel about, errr, let's say $25,000 for this here SUV?" the dealer asked the customers.

Dipper ran up to the car dealer. "Excuse me, sir. My sister is on a runaway bus fighting two younger clones of myself and I need to catch up to it and rescue her," he casually explained. "May I please use your golf cart to catch up to them?"

The car dealer stared at Dipper for a moment, before gladly smiling. "Sure thing, kid!"

"Thanks!" Dipper got into the driver's seat of the cart and drove off. However, he immediately drove back and parked himself in front of the car dealer. "And just so we're clear, I'm not stealing this cart, right? I'm kinda being accused right now of stealing and crashing people's cars in this town and I just want to, you know, make sure that we're clear that this is not the case."

"Nah kid, you have total permission to use my golf cart," the car dealer assured. "I won't press charges. I trust you."

"Cool! Thanks!" Dipper said with a smile before driving off again. Although he was somewhat shocked at how easy that exchange was, he was happy for something to finally work in his favor that day.

* * *

Mabel threw Quattro across the aisle, his face planting against the windshield before falling back onto the floor of the bus. Tracey was soon thrown right after, falling right beside him.

"You want some more?" Mabel asked tauntingly. "It looks to me like you two are starting to losing your touch!"

"Well, I wouldn't be 'losing my touch' if it wasn't for my useless partner!" Tracey shouted angrily as he turned to Quattro.

"Why are you always picking on me, man?" Quattro said, weakly lifting himself onto his knees. "I thought we were in this together!"

"And I thought for a clone just like me, you'd be a lot less of a screwup!" Tracey scolded. "Your priorities are never straight, you blew our cover, and you can't even back me up properly in a fight!"

"Yeesh," Mabel said, spectating the argument. "And I thought the fights between me and Dipper were rough. This right here is just unhealthy."

"Shut up!" Tracey shouted at Mabel.

"Wow, you're even touchier than the real Dipper is at twelve," Mabel snickered.

As Tracey gritted his teeth at Mabel angrily, Quattro stood up. "Tracey, man, you need to calm down! You're always so angry! Just chill out! I mean, we've been side by side for four years, yet lately, you've been nothing but a hothead! Have you forgotten why we're doing all this? Traveling the world?"

"Why would I want to travel the world with an incompetent moron like yourself?" Tracey scolded. He forcefully pushed Quattro in the chest with both of his hands, quickly knocking him under the bus steering wheel. He then tripped and fell hard on the brakes and gas pedal. His position and pressure on the pedals caused the brake pedal to snap off while pressing the gas pedal began to instantly increase the speed of the bus.

The sudden increase in speed caused Mabel to shriek as she plummeted down onto the floor. Waddles squealed as he slid on his bottom to the back of the bus. Tracey quickly grabbed onto a metal bar, struggling to maintain his balance.

The bus soon started moving down the lane at an uncontrollable speed. Drivers in its path quickly noticed the speeding bus behind them and drove to the sides to avoid it.

"What the-?" Tracey asked, confused. "Why are we moving? I thought we were parked!"

"Uh, guys?" Quattro said, pulling out the broken brake pedal from under below. "We have a bit of a problem."

Tracey's eyes bulged. He looked at the buttons and switches at the front of the bus and saw a yellow handle that read 'PULL TO APPLY PARKING BRAKE'.

"Quattro, quick! Pull the emergency brake!" Tracey called out, pointing to the brake.

Quattro looked up at the yellow handle and steadied himself from the ground with the steering wheel, unintentionally pulling it down to the right. In response, the bus began to slowly steer toward the right side of the street. It hit the sides of some of the parked cars on the right curb. However, the bus soon evened out to the middle of the street as Quattro let go of the wheel. He reached his left hand over to the yellow handle and grabbed it.

"I GOT IT!" Quattro exclaimed, pulling it. At the same moment, the bus hit a speed bump really quickly, causing Quattro, Tracey, and Mabel to all lose balance and fall over on the bus. Quattro's head violently smashed against the yellow handle, instantly breaking it off.

Tracey looked back over at the brake as he tried to regain his balance again. His eyes bulged fearfully once he realized it had broke.

Quattro rubbed his injured head as he looked back at the broken brake as well, eyes also bulging in fear. "Uh oh…"

The regular bus brakes that Quattro had first broken slid over to Tracey, who grabbed it and quickly crawled over to the front of the bus where Quattro was.

"Quattro, get on the seat and keep this bus steered!" he commanded. "I'm going to try to reconnect the brakes so we can slow this thing down."

"Got it!" Quattro accepted, climbing on top of the bus seat.

Tracey quickly got underneath the wheel and took out a set of tools stored in his vest. He laid them out beside the broken brakes and began to get to work. Quattro stood himself up on top of the bus chair and placed his hands on the steering wheel. Despite barely being able to see out the windshield due to his height, he tried to keep the out-of-control bus centered within the streets and avoid any pedestrians and cars in the way.

Mabel stood up from the bus floor, trying to balance herself on one of the chairs in the back of the bus. She turned behind her and noticed Waddles cringing fearfully in the back corner.

"Waddles! Don't worry! I'm coming!" She shouted as she tried to make her way over to him by steadying herself among the chairs. She reached him and wrapped her arms around him comfortingly. "Don't worry, Waddles. Everything's gonna be okay!"

She actually didn't know if everything would be though. She had no clue if the clones knew what they were doing, but given the circumstances and her lack of a license, she felt as though she wouldn't know much better anyway.

She began to think about the real Dipper. At least he had a license. Even if that wouldn't help the situation any better, she knew if he were there, he'd know how to solve things. The way the two worked, she was more of the muscle and he was more of the brain in the way they worked things out. Now that she knew that she had seen him getting arrested by the police for whatever reason, she thought she would never see him again. Instead of fighting the clones, she felt she should've just gotten off the bus and try to find some way to help him when she had the chance.

"MABEL!"

Mabel raised an eyebrow at the call of her name. She heard a series of honking noises coming from the right side of the bus. She stood up and looked out the window, spotting a speeding golf cart right beside the bus. She gasped once she noticed it was the real Dipper driving the golf cart. Somehow he was managing to maintain a surprisingly fast speed in a golf cart against a speeding bus.

"MABEL!" he called out again, honking the golf cart's horn again.

Balancing herself among the seats, she walked up to the side door on the back of the bus. She pushed it open and held on tightly to a metal bar inside, trying her hardest to ensure that she doesn't accidentally fall out.

"DIPPER?!" she called out to him. "But I thought you were-!"

"Long story!" he called back out to her. "Mabel, you need to stop the bus!"

"Uh, yeah," Mabel began, glancing over to the front of the bus. "About that...the, uh, two tiny versions of yourself broke the brakes and are at the front trying to control the bus!"

"Well, I looked ahead, and this road leads to a dead end! If this bus doesn't stop, it'll plummet into a river! You're going to have to jump on the cart with me!"

"What?!" Mabel was shocked at the craziness of Dipper's idea. "Are you crazy?!"

"It's the only way!" Dipper exclaimed, well-aware of the danger of the situation. "You gotta do it! Grab Waddles and jump on!"

"You expect me to be able to hold Waddles and make a ten-foot jump from a speeding bus over to you?!"

Dipper's eyes glanced around, looking straight ahead and spotting the railing at the end of the road that leads to the river. It looked to be a little over a mile away, yet that won't take long to reach their current speed. Realizing the extremity of his plan to get Mabel to jump across from the bus to his cart, he needed to think of something simpler solution quick.

He suddenly made a hard left with his steering wheel and collided the cart against the side of the bus. The golf cart and the side door of the bus were touching side to side, closing the gap for Mabel to jump, yet not exactly eliminating all traces of danger. She looked at Dipper as he tried to hold the cart against the bus door. He looked back up at her.

"MABEL!" he exclaimed, his face sweating bullets as he is seen visibly struggling to keep the cart against the bus. "GRAB WADDLES AND GET ON! QUICK!"

Mabel nodded. She jumped to the back of the bus in a hurry, still trying to hold herself steady as she grabbed onto the top of the seats.

* * *

At the front of the bus, Quattro was trying to keep the bus steady. He suddenly noticed the dead end ahead.

"Tracey! We're about to hit a dead end and we're gonna hit it fast!" Quattro warned. "Is that pedal almost fixed?"

Underneath the wheel, Tracey was drilling the pedal back in place. He clenched his teeth together fearfully.

"It's almost done! Just keep it steady!" Tracey replied.

"Right," Quattro nodded. "I suppose a steady death would be much better."

"Shut up! Just focus on the road!" Tracey shouted back at him.

* * *

In the back of the bus, Mabel held Waddles against her chest as she walked back toward the side door. She stood right beside the open door, preparing to jump on. Waddles started squealing loudly in fear.

"Shhh, Waddles," Mabel told him. "It's gonna be okay. I hope..."

"C'mon!" Dipper exclaimed to her frantically, sweat continuing to drip down his face. "I can't hold this thing forever!"

"Alright, here goes nothing!" Mabel replied.

Her heart was racing at the thought of what she was about to do. She freed one of her arms from holding onto Waddles so she could reach out to one of the poles of the golf cart, using the rest of her strength to keep Waddles pushed against her chest with her other arm, making Waddles even more anxious. She shut her eyes as she grabbed the back pole of the cart. She opened her eyes again, looking straight down beneath her, realizing the speed at which the two vehicles are traveling at. She gulped, shutting her eyes tightly again.

Without any more hesitation, she leaped from the bus onto the side of the cart, holding on as tight as she could. As soon as she was off the bus, Dipper pulled away from the bus and slowly pressed on the brakes of the cart to progressively slow down from their insanely high speed.

Mabel opened her eyes as they began to slow down. Dipper slowly put more emphasis on the brakes and the cart eventually came to a complete stop. The two looked forward at the bus as it continued to speed off. Mabel felt as though her heart was racing at a couple million miles per hour. But despite all her previous fears, she smiled.

" _WOOHOO!_ " she cheered as she placed Waddles on the ground. Dipper stepped off the cart, and she immediately ran up to him and hugged him tightly. " _WE DID IT! WE DID IT! WE DID IT!_ "

"Hell yeah, we did!" Dipper smiled as she hugged him, also feeling a rush of adrenaline after everything that had just happened.

Mabel put him down. And started punching the air excitedly, before punching him in the arm. "I can't believe you actually pulled that off! I could've sworn I was gonna die!"

"That's why you should always have faith in your brother," Dipper poked, rubbing his knuckles against his shirt in a playfully egotistic manner.

"Wait!" Mabel exclaimed, coming to a sudden realization. "What about all of our stuff?"

Realizing that they had completely left behind all their bags on the bus, Dipper's eyes bulged. "Oh, well, yeah, that's kinda something to worry about," he admitted. "But I mean, at least we're alive. That counts for something."

"What about your tiny copies?"

"Pfft,  _them_ we don't need to worry about," Dipper said, crossing his arms carelessly. "After getting us into this mess in the first place, what happens to them on that bus is the least of my concerns."

* * *

"TRACEY?! THE BRAKES?!" Quattro nervously exclaimed to Tracey as they neared the railings at the end of the road.

"GOT IT!" Tracey exclaimed as he finally fixed the brakes. He laid himself back and pushed down on the pedal as hard as he could with his foot.

The bus began to slow down as the brakes began to screech against the asphalt of the road.

"You did it!" Quattro cheered. "We're slowing down!"

"HA!" Tracey laughed victoriously. "That's how it's done!"

The speed of the bus had been insanely high before, and despite the use of the brakes, they were still moving at a decently fast speed. Quattro tried to look outside through the windshields, but couldn't see how close they were to the railings anymore.

"Wait, we're slowing down but I think we're still gonna hit the railings!" Quattro warned.

"What? Really?" Tracey pushed even harder on the brakes, slowing down the bus a bit more. "Quattro! Get down or you're gonna-"

Before he could finish his sentence, the bus collided straight into the railings, and Tracey flew back down against the bottom of the bus seat. However, the impact was not hard enough to break through the railings. Despite the whiplash, the bus was now still.

Tracey opened his eyes, not feeling any sort of motion going on within the bus. No falling. No speeding. It wasn't completely still because he had been thrown off the brakes and so the bus was trying to move forward, but it didn't feel like it was moving forward. It felt like they had come to a stop. His face lit up happily.

"I-I think I did it!" Tracey exclaimed excitedly. He grabbed a roll of duct tape from his vest and taped the brakes pedal down, ending the slight feeling of movement that had continued after the impact. "Quattro! We did it! The bus is stopped! We survived!"

He heard no response from Quattro. He looked up at the bus seat from under the wheel and didn't see Quattro standing there like he did before.

"Quattro?" Tracey called out, confused. He got out from underneath the wheel and looked up at the seat and around the bus, verifying that Quattro was nowhere to be seen. He turned his head toward the windshield and saw a giant hole in the windshield directly in front of the driver's seat. His eyes bulged. "Oh no..."

Tracey ran out of the bus and ran straight up to the railings. He looked down below and was horrified at what he saw. Beyond the railings was the edge of a small cliff that led straight into a riverbank. At the bottom, Quattro was in the water, slowly dissolving.

" _OH MY GOD!_ " Tracey exclaimed in horror.

" _TRACEY!_ " Quattro called out, reaching his hand out to him as the lower half of his body dissolved in the river.

"QUATTRO! NO!" Tracey called back, reaching his hand to him.

"IT'S TOO LATE FOR ME, TRACEY!" Quattro told him as water reached the middle of his torso.

"NO!" Tracey cried in denial. "THIS IS MY FAULT! I'M SORRY, QUATTRO! I'M SORRY FOR EVERYTHING!"

While Tracey stood at the railing, Dipper pulled up to the scene in the golf cart with Mabel and Waddles. They parked and stepped out the cart, and slowly walked up closer to spectate the scene.

"GO ON, TRACEY!" Quattro demanded, the water at his chest now. "TRAVEL THE WORLD WITHOUT ME! FULFILL OUR DREAM!" At this point, the water began to completely rush over his remaining head and arms, slowly dissolving the rest of him. "DO IT... _for meee…._ "

Quattro was dissolved completely in the riverbank. Tracey stood at the railing with his hand still reaching out below as if Quattro was still there.

"Quattro…" he managed to let out. Despite his inability to shed tears, he began to sob. He dropped to his knees and buried his face in his hands as he wept and mourned the loss of his friend.

Dipper and Mabel looked on at Tracey sympathetically. The two glanced over at one another, realizing that they both feel sorrow for Tracey's loss.

"So you feel terrible for him too, right?" Mabel asked.

"Right," Dipper nodded. "I mean, it sucks. He just lost the only friend he's had for four years. Even if I am peeved at everything they did to us today, this is still pretty messed up."

"Agreed," Mabel nodded. She looked back over at Tracey, who was still sobbing. "What should we do now?"

"I think I have an idea." Dipper walked up closer to Tracey but maintained a fair distance. He cleared his throat aloud, causing Tracey to take his face out from his hands and look up at him. His eyebrows narrowed angrily.

"Oh, it's  _you_ ," he said apathetically. "You saw what happened. Are you here to finish me off too?"

"Um, actually, no," Dipper said.

"So what, you came here to gloat?" Tracey asked, standing up. "Be like 'Haha, look at me. I'm still here! I escaped your trap! Hahaha!'"

"Geez, man!" Dipper said, putting his arms forward defensively. "No, I'm here to say I'm sorry for your loss."

"Really?" Tracey asked, unconvinced. "After everything I've put you through today,  _that's_ all you gotta say. That you're sorry?"

"Look, man, I'm not thrilled about everything that happened before, but you just lost your best friend," Dipper explained. "The last thing I want to do is make you feel worse than you already do."

Tracey's hostile stance changed back into a somber one. He hung his head and arms down sadly. "Quattro was all I had. He was like my brother. For four years, we stuck together. And lately, I've just treated him like garbage. I belittled him, controlled him, and scolded him more than I ever have."

"Yeah, you were  _pretty_  nasty to him," Mabel agreed as she walked up to the two.

"Mabel!" Dipper nudged her with his elbow, warning her to show respect.

"No, she's right," Tracey dismissed. "She saw it herself. I have been pretty nasty to him. And karma has punished me for it."

Dipper walked up to Tracey and placed his hand on his shoulder. "Hey man, maybe we can help you out?"

"How do you plan on doing that?" Tracey asked.

"Well, if you promise not to betray us again, we can go back to Gravity Falls together, get you the parts you need for your hot air balloon and maybe I can even create a new clone for you to be with."

"A new Quattro?" Tracey looked over to the side and thought about it. He scanned Dipper from top to bottom and shook his head. "No. It wouldn't be the same. However, I'll gladly accept the hot air balloon parts. But how exactly are we gonna get to Gravity Falls now?"

Before either Dipper or Mabel could think of an answer, the sound of sirens began to blare behind them. The three turned around and saw that there were police cruisers in the distance driving up to them.

"Oh, great," Dipper remarked sarcastically, beginning to panic. "The police are coming. They can't see me! They'll probably arrest me again if they do! We gotta move!"

"Move where?" Tracey asked, frantically glancing around their surroundings. "We're at a dead end! And if you're suggesting we jump over the railings, that isn't exactly gonna so well in my case."

Mabel looked at the ground and noticed her and Dipper's belongings and bags scattered around the outside of the crashed bus. She notices several of her sweaters pouring out of her large luggage. Beside it, she noticed the trench coat that the clones had used when pretending to be Dipper. At that moment, an idea hit her.

"Guys, I have an idea!" she exclaimed, picking up the trench coat and a sweater from the ground.

* * *

Three police cars and two ambulances soon pulled up to the crashed bus. Officers exited the cruisers and approached the crash. At the same time, paramedics exited the ambulances and prepared the backs for any possible injured people.

Some of the officers searched around the interior of the bus, other cops remaining outside. Some looked around the area and noticed the many sweaters, dresses, and outfits scattered among the ground.

The police chief looked up at one of the officers inside the bus. "Any survivors?"

"Nothing here, Chief," the officer replied as he looked around. "Bus is practically empty. But there are some opened bags here. There must've been someone on this bus."

" _Gah!_ " one of the officers outside the bus cried out.

"What is it, Bucky?" the Chief asked, running up to the panicked officer.

"Well, we have a...pig…" the officer named Bucky claimed, spotting Waddles sitting beside the bus. Waddles gave an innocent oink as he looked up at the officer.

"Wait!" a voice called out.

Beside the bus was a large bush, where a person walked out from. That person was actually Mabel sat on top of Dipper's shoulders, the two wearing the clones' large trench coat.

However, due to their teenage heights, the trench coat fit them considerably smaller than it did on the clones. Dipper's legs popped out from the bottom of the coat, while it managed to cover Mabel along with his face and torso. To top off the attempted disguise, Mabel tucked her back down the neck of the trench coat and wore a piece of duct tape above her upper lip to mimic a mustache. To sum up, the two appeared as a very tall man wearing a very short trench coat.

"That's my pig!" Mabel told the officer, attempting a masculine voice. "We are the only survivors of this crash."

"The only survivors?" the Chief asked, raising an eyebrow. "What happened to everyone else?"

"They died," Mabel bluntly told him.

"Then, where are the bodies?" another officer asked.

"Look, I don't know the details, man," Mabel shrugged, breaking out of her masculine voice. "They're just dead. They're gone. Just trust me on this."

The officers stared on at her with somewhat unconvinced looks. The Chief himself looked at the two suspiciously. Realizing she's on the brink of getting caught, Mabel began to sweat nervously.

"Alright, I lied! My baby survived too!" she admitted. She then pulled out Tracey from behind her back, who was wrapped up in a bundle of her own sweaters, resembling a wrapped up baby. He looked extremely unamused.

Tracey's reveal caused the Chief to perk up. "Aw, what a cute little fella." Mabel was surprised by how the Chief was actually buying her act.

"This is incredibly demeaning," Tracey uttered unenthusiastically, but not loud enough for the Chief to hear.

The Chief appeared serious again and stood up straight as he looked forward at Mabel. "Sir, we need to get you and your child to the hospital immediately."

"Uhh," Mabel panicked, glancing around, trying to think of a way to get out of the situation. "No! That's not necessary! We're completely unharmed. No pain or injuries! Also, we're allergic to hospitals and will die if you put us in that ambulance."

"Are you sure?" the Chief asked, somewhat concerned.

"Absolutely," Mabel assured him. She then glanced over at the bus. "But if you don't mind, could we get some help getting someplace else?"

* * *

It was early in the evening. The sun was close to setting and Soos, Melody, and Wendy stood at the Gravity Falls bus stop. Soos was pacing around nervously. Melody and Wendy had particularly concerned looks as well.

"I don't get it," Soos said as he paced around. "They should've been here by now!"

"Soos, man, the bus is just late," Wendy said, trying to calm him down.

"Five hours late?" Soos asked.

"Honey, it happens," Melody added. "Not often, of course. But it happens. I mean, my family vacation to Paris went through a thirty-eight-hour flight delay once. Imagine bathing and spending a night at an airport. Not fun."

"I don't know," Soos said, hanging his arms down. "What if something bad happened to them? What if like, a clone or something tried to replace one of them and they got in a bunch of different chases and events that led to their bus crashing?"

"Soos, that's honestly one of the dumbest and most unlikely things that could have possibly happened to them," Wendy bluntly told him with an eye-roll.

"You're right," Soos admitted. "Although, I've always thought of how cool it would be to go against a clone of myself. I mean, c'mon. Doesn't that sound cool?"

"Of course it sounds cool!" Melody enthusiastically agreed. "I've always wondered if I could actually beat myself in a fight."

"Yeah, they say that a fight with yourself would only go on forever because of how equal you two are," Soos explained. "But I don't know, dude. I feel like I could kick my own butt pretty good."

"Exactly!" Melody agreed. "It sounds fun, almost."

"Yeah, about that..." Wendy intervened, raising her hand up. "Fought against me before…well, sorta. Either way, would not recommend."

"Oh yeah, I remember that day!" a voice called from behind her. Soos, Melody, and Wendy turned to spot Dipper and Mabel walking up to them with their bags, Waddles following behind them.

"Yeah, and I'm still trying to forget about that day…" Dipper said, glancing away in embarrassment as he recalls the mentioned experience.

"DUDES!" Soos exclaimed joyfully as he ran up to the two and hugged them tightly.

"Soos!" Dipper and Mabel exclaimed happily despite Soos's embrace preventing their ability to breathe.

"I can't believe you guys are actually here! I've missed you dudes so much. I almost don't wanna let go!"

"We've missed you too, Soos!" Mabel said, still struggling to breathe.

"But  _please_  let go!" Dipper asked, face beginning to turn purple through lack of air. "We...can't...breathe!"

"Whoops!" Soos exclaimed, promptly letting go of the two. "Sorry dudes. Really hard to control my excitement right now."

"It's alright, Soos," Mabel forgave. "We're happy to know you are just as big and bold as we remember!"

"A Soos never changes his ways," Soos told her, putting his fist to his chest. "But wait, why didn't you guys show up in a bus?"

"Oh, we ran into a few setbacks," Mabel began to explain. "It's a long story, but we ended up getting driven by a nice police officer who parked us a couple of blocks back and so we came rushing over to the bus stop because we knew you guys would be waiting here for us!"

As Mabel and Soos continued to converse, Dipper laid on his knees and continued to rub his throat with his hand, trying to soothe himself from Soos's blood-constricting hug. He noticed a shadow suddenly cast over him. He looked up to see Wendy stand before him. He immediately noticed her change in wardrobe compared to the last time he saw her, now wearing a sleeveless red flannel top with a dark gray shirt underneath. He also noticed that she continued to wear his old pine tree cap.

"Well, so much for 'See you next summer', huh?" Wendy asked him with a frown, raising an eyebrow.

Dipper stood up in front of her, unsure of how to respond. He did remember the note that she handed him before he left Gravity Falls last time that said she'd see him next summer, but it's more than obvious that they never saw each other that next summer.

"Well, I mean...you see, it's a long story…" He was prepared to explain to her all the reasons they hadn't come back after all these years but paused as she began to laugh.

"I'm messing with you, man!" she chuckled, playfully punching him in the shoulder. "I'm stoked to see you again!" She scanned him top to bottom. "Look at you, man! You're like, taller than me now!"

Dipper chuckled, making note of the fact that he now stood about two inches taller than her as he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "I guess that's what getting older does to you."

"You're telling me," Wendy said with a smirk, crossing her arms.

"Wendy!" Mabel shouted as she pulled her into a warm embrace.

"Mabel!" Wendy exclaimed, returning the embrace with one arm. As the two pulled apart, Wendy glanced at Mabel's outfit. "Look at you, girl! Way to dress better than I ever did back in high school."

"Aww, you! At least you have being the coolest girl on the planet still going for you!" Mabel told her. She glanced over at Dipper and how he didn't have his hat on. "And unlike Dipper, at least you can still hold onto a hat for four years."

Dipper's eyes bulged as he began to frantically pat the top of his head with his hands, realizing he wasn't wearing his hat. "My hat! I must've left it behind on the bus!"

Mabel started laughing, confusing Dipper. She then dived into her backpack and took out the lumberjack hat. "Nah, I found it and picked it up when cleaning up all the stuff that came out of our bags." She walked up to him and improperly planted the hat on top of his head. "Just wanted to get a dorky reaction out of you."

Dipper adjusted the hat straight on his head. He turned his head toward Wendy, who smiled warmly upon seeing the hat on his head. Her smile said enough about how she respected him still holding onto the hat after all this time. He smiled back at her.

"Dipper, Mabel," Soos called out as he approached them with his arm around Melody. "You dudes remember Melody, right? Remember that one time at Hoo-Ha Owl's? With the psycho video game chick that was trying to kill you guys?"

"Hey guys," Melody greeted, waving her hand to them.

"Wait, I remember!" Mabel shouted as she realized who she was. "Soos, isn't this your  _lady-friend_?"

"Heh, that's right, dudes," Soos nodded. "Melody and I have been tight after all these years. She's been running the Shack along with me and Abuelita."

"Soos talks about you guys a lot. It's gonna be so cool to finally witness all the awesomeness he said you two have firsthand," she told the two. "Ya know, without getting attacked by a living video game this time."

"Well, hopefully our next few encounters include substantially less living video games attacking us," Dipper told her.

"So, I guess Melody is the new worker here at the Mystery Shack then?" Mabel assumed. "Cool!"

"Not sure if I would call Melody new, dude," Soos said, scratching his head. "She's been working with me almost since I took over the Shack."

"What?" Mabel asked, confused. "But I heard Candy came by recently and saw someone new working at the Shack."

"Oh! You're probably talking about Ryland," Wendy intervened, realizing who Mabel was talking about. "Soos just hired him a few months ago."

"Oh right!" Soos remembered. "He's at the Shack right now actually. We could go meet him, but I thought you guys might want to take a drive around the town and see what's changed."

"Spoiler alert: nothing much," Wendy told them candidly.

"You know, ss nice as a drive around the town would be, I'm honestly exhausted," Dipper admitted, hunching forward tiredly. Mabel nodded in agreement. "You think we could just head back to Shack, Soos?"

"Of course, dudes," Soos told them. He suddenly lifted Dipper up and placed him on his left shoulder, before lifting and placing Mabel on his right shoulder, holding the two on so they don't fall off. "Anything for the two best dawgs on the planet."

Dipper and Mabel laughed as Soos carried the two on his shoulders on their way back to the Shack. Waddles ran up and walked beside Soos, with Melody and Wendy smiling as they followed behind with the twins' luggage.

To Dipper and Mabel, it felt good to finally be reunited with their old friends.

* * *

The door to the Mystery Shack's gift shop opened up and Mabel dashed inside, with Soos, Dipper, Melody, Wendy, and Waddles following behind normally. Mabel spun around in circles as she glanced all around the shop excitedly.

"Wow! It's almost like nothing's changed at all!" Mabel said eagerly. "It's just as I remember it!"

"Of course! I decided to make sure I honor the legacy that Stan left behind with the Shack. I mean, why fix what ain't broken?" Soos explained.

"I guess that's one way to look at things," Dipper said, examining the Shack himself. "But if it were me, I would've really shaped this place up. You know? Put some real, interesting attractions up. Maybe take some inspiration from Great Uncle Ford and put a more scientific spin on the place."

"Dude, don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have you back," Soos said, putting his hand on Dipper's shoulder. "But that idea just reminded me of what a huge nerd you are."

"So where's this Ryland-fellow?" Mabel asked somewhat nervously. She wasn't sure what to expect from the new member.

"Probably hanging out somewhere in the back," Wendy assumed. She turned toward the museum and cupped her hands around her mouth to amplify her voice. " _Yo Lando! We're back!_ " Wendy turned back toward the twins. "You guys are gonna love him. Working with Ryland's been a blast. He's the first one to keep me sane around here since you two left. Seriously, apart from you guys, he's one of the coolest people I know. "

"Like there's anyone that could possibly be any cooler than you are," Dipper said, refusing to believe that Ryland could be on any level as remotely as cool as he knew Wendy was.

"Yeah," Mabel agreed. "I agree with Dipper. He might be cool, but I don't think there's anything that'll make him top you in my eyes."

Ryland suddenly popped out of the museum, immediately spotting Soos, Wendy, and Melody. "About time you guys got back. I thought you guys were supposed to be back like four hours ago?"

"The dawgs were a kinda late," Soos told him. He pointed him in Dipper and Mabel's direction. "But they're here now."

Ryland looked over at the twins and flicked his hair back. Dipper gave him a friendly smile as he waved at him. Mabel, however, just stood still and stared at him, mouth agape. Her eyes began to sparkle as she simply looked on at him and she could feel her skin turning cold. To her, time had slowed down and she was watching him flick his long blonde hair back in slow motion as he looked over at her.

"Ryland, I'd like to introduce you to some of the greatest people on the planet," Wendy began. "Meet Dipper and Mabel Pines."

Dipper walked up to Ryland, offering his hand to shake. "Nice to meet you, Ryl-"

Mabel had suddenly shoved Dipper to the side, pushing him to the ground, and stood in his place, offering her own hand for Ryland to shake. "HI, I'M MABEL! SUCH A PLEASURE TO MEET YOU!"

Ryland was put off by Mabel's sudden brashness by pushing her brother to do side. Nonetheless, he dismissed it, smiled and casually shook her hand. "Pleasure to meet you too, Mabel." He looked down at Dipper, who was lying on the floor in pain. "You as well, Dipper."

"Gee, thanks," Dipper said while giving Mabel an irritated look as he sat up, grabbing onto his left arm in pain.

"I'm actually about to head home for the night, so I'm glad I got the chance to meet you guys real fast before I left," Ryland told the two. "Soos and Wendy have said a lot about you guys. You two sound pretty cool, so I can't wait to work with the both of you."

"And I can't wait to work with  _you_ ," Mabel said flirtatiously. "It's always great to work with and get to know new people."

"Agreed," Ryland said with a smile but remained completely oblivious to Mabel's flirtatious tone. "Anyways, I better get going. I'll see you guys around." He walked past the two and toward the gift shop door. "G'night, guys!"

"Good night, Ryland!" Soos and Melody returned.

"Night, Lando!" Wendy called back.

"Night, Ryland! It was nice meeting you!" Mabel called back cheerfully with a wave as he left the Shack. She placed her hands on her waist and smiled as she stared at the door. Dipper finally rose from the floor beside her, still holding onto his hurt arm that she had violently shoved. He gave her an annoyed look, but she paid no notice to it. "I have a feeling this is going to be a great summer!"

* * *

Upstairs in the attic, Dipper and Mabel were fixing up their room, with Waddles sat comfortably on top of Mabel's bed. Having spent the past two hours unpacking and then freshening up, the two were just about resettled back in their bedroom. Granted, they were settled in a different way than they were last time considering they're sixteen now, but the comfort felt all the same.

There was a knock on their bedroom door behind them. They turned and saw Soos standing at the doorway in his pajamas.

"Hey dudes," he waved. "Just checking in on you two. Making sure you're settling back in all good."

"Yeah, we're settling in just fine," Dipper told him, sitting down on his bed.

"Yeah," Mabel agreed. "Apart from the dead rats I had to clean out from under my bed and the strong smell of cheese, it all-in-all feels just like it did last time we were here."

"Heh, yeah. I totally was not using this room as a storage for my cheese sandwiches," Soos said nervously as he scratched the back of his head. "Anyways, I'm gonna hit the sack. If you dudes need anything at all, just shout out for me and Melody."

"Thanks Soos!" Dipper and Mabel shouted in unison.

"You don't get the credit you deserve, Soos," Mabel said. "Someone should award you with a million cheese sandwiches!"

"Man, if that isn't living the dream, then I don't know what is," Soos said as he thought about eating a million cheese sandwiches. "You know, it's crazy to see you guys so much older now and yet, after all this time, it's like you guys haven't changed a bit since you were twelve."

"Well, you know what they say," Dipper began. "Growing old doesn't mean we gotta grow up."

"Preach it, dawg," Soos said, hitting his fist against his chest. He waved to the dudes once more before walking down the hallway. "Good night dudes!"

"Night Soos!" the two waved back.

Mabel back toward her bed then turned to look around the room. "Welp, I'm unpacked."

"Me too," Dipper said, looking around the room as well. "I can't help but feel like I'm forgetting about something though."

"I swear I did a thorough check inside and around the bus for all of our things," Mabel said, raising her hands up defensively.

"No, not about that," Dipper said, shaking his head. "I have all of my stuff. But it feels like we're forgetting to do something."

"I don't know," Mabel said, thinking about it herself. "Are we?"

Suddenly, their attention was drawn to the sound of a pebble hitting against the glass of their window. They looked over at their window, and sure enough, there were more pebbles being thrown at it. The two walked over to the window and looked outside. On the ground, they spotted Tracey angrily shaking his fists in the air as he looked at them.

"Oh, right," Mabel said, glancing over at Dipper. Remembering what they had forgotten to handle, the two walked away from the window and out of the room.

* * *

Tracey sat on a rock, head placed in his hands as he waited for Dipper and Mabel to show up. A moment later, Dipper and Mabel walked out of front door of the Shack carrying a bunch of different materials and supplies. Tracey stood up, and walked over to the two.

"Where have you two been?" Tracey asked, annoyed. "You told me to wait close to the Shack when we got dropped off. That was, like, three hours ago!"

"Relax," Dipper commanded. "After leaving me tied up in the woods, you're lucky we're doing this for you at all."

Tracey sighed guiltily. "You're right. Sorry."

"Don't worry about it. Here," Dipper said, dropping the materials on the ground, Mabel dropping her materials as well. "Just what you needed: rip-stop polyester and nylon, Palembang canes, stainless steel, propane tanks, one of Stan's old burners, and Mabel's sewing machine."

"You're lucky I always bring a spare with me," Mabel said unhappily, warningly pointing her finger at him.

"Gee guys," Tracey said, looking at all the materials on the ground. "I don't know what to say. I don't deserve this."

"No. You don't," Dipper agreed, crossing his arms. "But we're giving it to you anyways. And from this point onward, we never want to be involved with you ever again."

"And just to be prepared, we've decided that we're carrying an emergency bottle of water on us at all times," Mabel added, with Dipper nodding in agreement.

"Alright, I got it," Tracey said, picking up the supplies from the ground. "I promise I won't ever get myself involved with you guys again. This will be the last time."

"Good," Dipper said. "Anyways, with that warning out of the way, we do want to wish you good luck on traveling the world."

"Yeah, for as much as we promise that we'll kill you with water if you do us wrong again, we do hope that, you know, you don't actually get yourself killed," Mabel stated.

"Thanks, I guess," Tracey said. "This was a long time dream for me and Quattro, but now that he's gone, it's up to me to fulfill it. It'll probably take all summer to complete, but it's not like I got any other plans."

"You sure you don't need any help?" Dipper asked him, looking over the large abundance of supplies.

"I'll be fine. It's probably for the best that I do this on my own anyway," Tracey told them. "But thank you, guys. For everything. And again, I'm sorry for all the trouble I've caused. I can only hope that the next time you two do happen to hear from me, it's when I'm calling out from the skies."

"Well, again, try not to fall in puddle or something," Dipper chuckled. "This stuff's too expensive to go to waste."

"I'll try my best," Tracey nodded. He began to walk backward into the forest while he held all the materials with his hands. "Farewell, old friends. Thank you for everything once again."

Dipper and Mabel waved goodbye to Tracey as he turned and walked into the forest with the hot air balloon supplies. Not less than a minute, he had disappeared into the dark night of the woods. The two stopped waving and continued to just look on at the forest.

Mabel turned to Dipper. "Do you think he'll actually manage to make that thing?"

Dipper yawned. "Who knows? I'm tired. C'mon, let's go get some sleep."

He turned around and walked back inside the Shack, with Mabel following right after him, closing the door right behind them.

* * *

Dipper and Mabel walked back into their bedroom. Waddles was still asleep in Mabel's bed, completely undisturbed. She lifted up her covers and placed herself underneath before covering herself up again, closing her eyes. Dipper placed himself underneath the covers of his bed and leaned over to his lantern to shut it off.

"Good night, Mabel."

"Good night, stupid."

Dipper chuckled softly as he shut off his lantern, leaving nothing but the dim moonlight to illuminate the room. He laid himself back in bed, getting himself into a comfortable position before closing his eyes.

He laid there silently for a minute before his eyes opened again. He turned himself over to his other side and looked at his table. Beside his lantern, he spotted his journal. The one he had made himself to take back to Piedmont after leaving Gravity Falls before. He had forgotten all about it until the previous night when Stan and Ford called them and Ford reminded him that he was excited to see what he had put down. After that call, he had just found it buried underneath a pile of forgotten junk within his closet back home. He had just thrown it into his suitcase to take along with him and didn't think much else of it.

He glanced over at Mabel and saw her fast asleep. He knew she was tired and wasn't willing to risk disturbing her. He grabbed his journal from the table and grabbed his phone. He buried himself beneath the covers and turned on his phone screen. Besides contact with family and friends, the only other thing he knew he would regularly use his new phone for was its flashlight for late-night reading.

He turned on the phone's light and it illuminated the covers. He pointed it toward his journal and found his pine tree symbol on the cover. He opened the book up to the first page and there was a bunch of greeting words such as 'Hey there!', 'What's up?', and 'Yo, what's going on?', but they were all scribbled over or crossed out. He turned the page and found just about every page after to be completely blank. He flipped back to his first page with all the written out introductions.

"Wow," he whispered to himself. His first and only page was nothing but an attempt to simply start his journal, but he had never got around to actually writing out a complete page. It looked as though he had just given up.

And rightfully so, as he recalls there being nothing interesting about Piedmont, no matter how hard he had tried looking around for weirdness there. Piedmont was just not a place for weirdness the way Gravity Falls was, and so he found nothing to catalog. Maybe he could've just turned it into a private journal about his life, but it's not like he lives a particularly exciting life that warrants an entire book dedicated to it.

He then thought of this as an opportunity. A chance to give this journal thing another crack. Now that he was in a place far more interesting and weird than Piedmont ever was. Now that he can find far more things to actually catalog. Now that his life has become somewhat interesting again.

He ripped out and crumpled up the first page from the book. He got out from under the covers and quickly grabbed a pencil from the top of his table before coming back. Before he could go to sleep, he had one more thing that he needed to do. One more thing before he could truly start his summer back in Gravity Falls.

* * *

_June 4th, 2016_

_Hello!_

_My name is Dipper Pines and this is the start of my brand new journal!_

_Now I've had this thing for awhile now and had big plans to use this thing back in my hometown, Piedmont. I wanted to record research of weird creatures and interesting parts of my life. But as it turns out, Piedmont isn't exactly a weird place and I'm not exactly the most interesting person…_

_So I had abandoned this journal and forgotten about it for many years. That was until last night, where I actually remembered that I had it, and so I've taken it along with me for my summer vacation in the strange town of Gravity Falls._

_This is the second time that Mabel (my twin sister) and I have traveled to this town. We've had some crazy experiences the last time we were here. And as much as I'd love to go into detail about those experiences, I think I'm gonna just have this journal be exclusively for this summer only. I only have so many pages!_

_I want to keep this first page short for introductory purposes. But if you're intrigued by what you're reading so far, I suggest you continue. While I can't say I know exactly how things will go, I have a good feeling that this is going to be one hell of a summer. I mean, the last time we were here in Gravity Falls, we fought zombies, gnomes, ghosts, dinosaurs, demons, and more! And that was all when we were only twelve!_

_Now my sister and I are sixteen (turning seventeen in August). So honestly, who knows what we'll encounter after four years?_

_I guess we'll just have to wait and see. But for now, I'm glad to finally be back in Gravity Falls after all these years. While I wait for my great uncles to return from their mission in the Arctic, there's a town to be explored._

_And I plan to explore it with my friends and family._

* * *

 

_RK, JUDYLWB IDOOV! LW LV JRRG WR EH EDFN!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to ArtyLovr for doing the amazing Quattro death comic strip.


	6. Where the Weirdness Happens: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dipper meets a familiar face he didn't expect to see in Gravity Falls.

Waking up to a Sunday morning in Gravity Falls was as close to waking up to a normal morning in any other normal town. Dipper remembered that as he woke up from his first sleep in the town since 2012. He rubbed his eyes and looked around the room, which was now illuminated by the light of the morning sun. He smiled. The sight of their room in the Shack was still admiring to him, with how long it's been since he'd seen it before returning last night.

He then glanced over at Mabel's bed on the other side of the room and saw her tucked in, still asleep. He took no interest in disturbing her, figuring it's best to allow her to wake on her own terms as he did. However, he was not going to wait around for her, as his stomach was already calling to him and he needed to answer it. He daintily stepped out of bed, trying his best not to wake her, and walked out of the room.

He casually made his way down the stairs, although his body was still internally trying to adjust from waking up. Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, he took a turn straight into a kitchen.

"Mornin' dude!" Soos said to him.

Dipper stopped dead in his tracks in surprise and glanced over at Soos, Melody, and Abuelita sitting together at the kitchen table. Soos was eating, Melody was reading a magazine, and Abuelita was drinking tea, but they all looked over at him as he entered the kitchen. Still readjusting from his slumber, he had only just now remembered that Soos, his girlfriend, and grandmother were residents of the Shack and didn't even think of encountering them at this time.

"Hey, Dipper!" Melody greeted as she looked up from her magazine.

" _Buenos dias_ ," Abuelita told him as she mixed her tea with a spoon.

"Oh, uh, hey guys!  _Buenos...dias?_ " Dipper returned in the best way he could, fully aware of his poor Spanish-speaking abilities.

"How'd you sleep, dude?" Soos asked as he ate a spoonful of oatmeal. "Cheese smell wasn't a problem, right?"

"Um, no," Dipper replied stiffly, still recovering from the surprise of seeing the three.

"Aw sweet! Good to know," Soos said as he ate another spoonful of oatmeal.

Melody seemed to notice Dipper's stiff movement and speech and raised an eyebrow as she looked at him. "You okay, Dipper? You seem kinda off."

"Oh, no, I'm fine," Dipper reassured, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. "It's just...I kinda forgot you guys were living here now. I wasn't really expecting to run into you guys right away. So, my bad."

"No worries, dawg," Soos brushed off. "Heck, this is probably gonna take us as much getting used to as it is for you guys. But before you know it, we'll all be like one big, tight family."

Suddenly, Mabel skipped into the kitchen.

"Morning bro-bro!" she said gleefully as she skipped right past him. Not even surprised by the presence of Soos, Melody, and Abuelita the way that Dipper was, she casually went up to them.

She raised her hand up to high-five Soos. "Soos! There's my favorite elbow-licking man-child!"

Soos smiled and gave her a high-five. "Elbow-licking man-child...I like it!"

Mabel ran up to Abuelita next and hugged her. "Abuelita! You still don't look a day over forty!"

Abuelita laughed. " _Aye, chica_. You are making me blush."

Mabel then went right up to Melody and glanced at her outfit. "And Melody! Rocking the polka dots like always! Although, I gotta speak from personal experience: Polkatopia is a far superior brand than Superpolka."

Melody's eyes bulged. "THANK YOU! My aunt got me this top for Christmas, and while I'm incredibly grateful and it is really cute, I've always told her that Superpolka only makes their tops from Polyester and that they're the least comfortable thing in existence. The only reason I'm wearing it now is that she requires monthly photo-evidence that I actually wear it, so I might as well get it out of the way now."

"Polyester is a crime!" Mabel agreed. She examined Melody's top again. "The pattern is obviously very simple. I can easily replicate the same top out of straight cotton."

"Dude," Melody said, putting her hands on her own face in shock. "If you do that for me so I can please my crazy aunt  _and_ wear something comfortable and cute, I'd basically owe you a life debt."

"No life debt necessary!" Mabel claimed, gleefully. "It's on the house! If I get started now, I can have it done before afternoon."

Melody caught Mabel by surprise by hugging her tightly and excitedly. "Okay, like, I still have yet to get to know you properly, but you're already one of my favorite people on the  _planet!_ "

Mabel chuckled and hugged her back acceptingly. "I get that a lot."

They all started laughing and Dipper simply stared in shock. In contrast to him, Mabel had managed to wake up remembering Soos and the others and even managed to please the three with her greeting.

"Look at us!" Mabel spoke out amidst the laughter. "We're all getting along like one big, tight family!"

"Yeah! Haha, it's kinda funny actually," Soos began. "Dipper forgot we were living here when he walked in. You're basically doing the opposite of what he did. Now  _that's_ the definition of irony right there!"

Dipper narrowed his eyes in annoyance. He was well-aware of his own accidental ignorance but felt as though Soos was pushing it. Then again, this type of action from him isn't exactly new. It was still just as annoying as it has always been though.

"Oh wait!" Soos shouted, standing up from the table. "Where are my manners, dudes? You two are probably starving." He walked over to the pantry and opened it. "Let me fix you guys something to eat."

"Aw man, I'm so hungry I could go for almost anything right now," Mabel said as she and Dipper walked up behind Soos.

"Granted Grunkle Stan's hair isn't in it, at least," Dipper added.

"Uh oh," Soos said as he looked around the pantry.

"Uh oh?" Mabel echoed fearfully. "No one should ever have to say that when searching through the pantry!"

"Welp," Soos began as he closed the pantry. "We're all out of food. And it looks like I forgot to get groceries yesterday. Sorry dudes."

"Noooo!" Mabel cried dramatically.

"What? Seriously?" Dipper asked. "There's no food at all?"

"Unfortunately not, dude," Soos replied guiltily. "And the Shack opens in a few so we won't be able to go out and get more until later." He looked back at the kitchen table and noticed his half-eaten bowl of oatmeal. He grabbed it and held it out for the two. "But you dudes can have the other half of my oatmeal!"

Dipper looked at Soos' mushy and watered-down oatmeal in disgust. He found it extremely unappealing to look at and respectfully pushed it away.

"I'll pass," Dipper politely denied.

"Aw, what?" Mabel asked him. "I was gonna let you have it since you were the first one here, but if you don't want it, I'll gladly take it."

"Have at it, dude," Soos said, handing the bowl to Mabel.

Mabel took the spoon and began eating out of the bowl without issue, walking over to the table. Dipper had no regrets denying the oatmeal, but he was still very much hungry. He had another idea.

"Soos, why don't I go out and get your groceries for you?" he asked.

"Seriously dude?" Soos asked as he fixed up his Mr. Mystery outfit, adjusting his hat and tie. "That'd be great!"

"Yeah, I'll just get dressed and I'll walk on over to the grocery store and back," Dipper explained, beginning to walk out of the kitchen.

"You're gonna walk over to the grocery store?" Melody asked, raising an eyebrow. "That's like a two-mile walk there and back."

"Well, I mean, I could take the bus or something…" Dipper suggested.

"Why bother?" Soos interrupted. He picked up a pair of keys. "Here, take these."

He tossed the keys over to Dipper, who caught them. He stared at them, confused.

"What are these?" Dipper asked.

"The keys to my pickup, dude," Soos told him.

"You're letting me use it?" Dipper questioned, eyes bulging.

"Duh," Soos chuckled. "You have your license. And I guess since I spend most of the time working here anyway, I don't use it all that much besides getting food anyway. So yeah, you're free to use it whenever you need."

"Seriously?!" Dipper asked excitedly. "Thanks Soos!"

"Anytime, dawg."

Dipper excitedly ran upstairs with the keys in hand to get properly dressed for heading out in public. Mabel sat at the alongside Melody and Abuelita, eating the oatmeal. Soos turned to her.

"So,  _uh_ , I can trust him with my pickup, right?" Soos asked, somewhat nervously.

"Who, Dipper?" Mabel began. "Yeah, he's no pro, but he can drive."

"Oh, good," Soos said with a sigh of relief. "Hey wait, if you two are both sixteen, then how come you don't have your license?"

"Well, let's just say there's a reason my driver's ed department is looking for a new evaluator," Mabel said casually.

Soos, Melody, and Abuelita looked at her in surprise.

"Oh, um, wow," Melody spoke up.

"That's, uh...wow," Soos said.

" _Maldita sea, esa chica está jodidamente loca!_ " Abuelita exclaimed.

"Yeah," Mabel said, although not understanding what Abuelita said. "Scared her so bad, she quit her job."

Soos and Melody had an immediate sigh of relief. Abuelita looked to calm down a bit too.

"Oh, thank goodness, dude," Soos said.

"Wait, what did you guys think I meant?" Mabel said, raising an eyebrow.

There was silence in the room for a good moment. Soos and Melody looked over at each other frantically.

"Oh, is that a tourist I hear?" Soos pretended. "I better get to work. See you later, dude."

"Yeah, and I should get ready myself," Melody said, standing up from the table and quickly walking out of the kitchen.

Mabel and Abuelita were left alone in the kitchen. Abuelita continued to stir her tea while Mabel just awkwardly picked at the oatmeal in her bowl with a spoon. She looked up at Abuelita with a smile.

"So, how have you been all these years, Abuelita?" Mabel asked intently.

"Oh, you know.  _Mantenerse alejado de posibles asesinos locos_ ," Abuelita replied. "Just the usual."

"Same," Mabel said, still having no idea what she is saying.

* * *

Dipper stood in the line of Tons grocery store, having just finished gathering food for the Shack and a few items for himself. Aside from restocking on food items such as burrito bites and cheese boodles, he purchased a small portable UV flashlight and a bottle of invisible ink for his journal. At some point, he had lost his UV fixture that he used to use for Ford's Journals. When he realized how smart it would be to keep his own secrets in invisible ink alongside his normal journal entries, he took this as an opportunity to get another UV light alongside the ink. The fixture he used before got the job done, but it was annoying to bring around due to its size. He felt as though a smaller, more portable light source would work much better.

He was excited to work on his journal some more. This time, he was setting his own path and rules. Inspired by Ford's work, of course, but his own path nonetheless. He wanted something to have that'll always keep his adventures intact. Something that he might have to share with kids of his own one day. Well, if he manages not to burn it or permanently destroy it in some other way, of course.

The person in front of him moved up in line, and so he stepped up to the cashier.

"How are you doing today, son?" the cashier asked politely as he began to scan Dipper's items and place them in plastic bags. He was a cheery-looking old man with glasses.

"I'm doing fine. How about you?" Dipper asked, returning the kindness.

"Oh, just peachy," the man answered. "You new in town? I've gotten used to seeing and knowing the same ol' folks around here and I don't think I've seen you before."

"I'm not necessarily new, per say, but this is my second day here this summer," Dipper explained. He offered his hand out to the man. "I'm Dipper Pines."

"Oh, you're one of the Pines," the man said as he shook his hand. "You're kinda famous around here, aren't ya?"

"Well, I wouldn't say that," Dipper said, chuckling at the thought of being famous after the Weirdmageddon events that he had faced alongside his family. "Well-known maybe? I don't even know if I'd say that either. It's been four years since I was last here."

"Ah, gotcha," the man said, continuing to scan and bag his items. "By the way, my name is Richard Dalton. But you can just refer to me as Dalton. I own this store."

"Ah, Dal- _Tons_ ," Dipper realized. "I get it."

"Yep," Dalton nodded. "Though, I'll probably be retiring soon. This job is getting too tiring for me with all the trouble that's been going on around here."

"What kind of trouble?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Teenagers in particular. Not you, of course," Dalton began. "But teenagers have been coming in and rummaging around and making a mess of the aisles, a mess of the bathroom, and all-in-all causing havoc. And don't even get me started on the shoplifting issue we have around here."

As Dalton was speaking, Dipper was looking behind him at a hooded teenager that he saw near the front entrance. He seemed to examine a loaf of bread before promptly sticking it inside his hoodie.

"Hey wait!" Dipper said, pointing at the hooded teen. "Mr. Dalton, that guy just stuffed a loaf of bread in his hoodie!"

Dalton turned around and looked at the teen. He shrugged.

"Honestly, kid," he began. "This stuff happens so much that no one even bothers about it anymore. My security has even grown tired of it. Honestly, even I wouldn't even worry about it."

The teen then made an immediate bust out the door and tripped the anti-theft alarm. He continued to make a run for it despite this.

Dipper put on a determined expression. "You won't worry about it, but I will."

He hopped over his shopping cart and started running as fast as he could toward the door the shoplifter ran out. He ran outside and glanced around. Soon enough, he spotted the shoplifter around the back of the parking lot and ran after him. The shoplifter soon looked behind him and noticed he was being chased by Dipper and kept running.

"HEY!" Dipper called out mid-chase. "GET BACK HERE!"

_What am I doing? He isn't gonna listen to me._  He thought to himself. __  
  
He continued to run as fast as he could to the shoplifter, beginning to lose his breath. He knew that he wasn't a generally fast person unless he was in a pivotal situation that required such speed, usually in the case of life or death. However, he was surprised by the fact that he was actually managing to catch up to the shoplifter, who continued to run without looking back. Dipper didn't want to eventually take this wild chase into edgier terrains and figured he needed to put an end to this chase before it was too late. He tried to force a little more speed out of him and eventually got close enough to where he might be able to tackle him before he ran out of breath.

"Hey!" he called out one more time. "You gotta pay for that!"

Dipper jumped forward and wrapped his arms around the shoplifter by the torso and forced him down to the ground. Dipper and the shoplifter groaned in pain and exhaustion. Dipper kept the shoplifter down as he picked himself up from the ground, panting heavily.

"Haha!" Dipper laughed through his panting. "I...I sure got you! You...thief!"

He continued to pant exhaustingly but continued to speak. "I'm afraid you're gonna have to pay for that bread, sir. Mr. Dalton doesn't appreciate shoplifters in his st-"

The shoplifter had gotten on his knees and turned his head to look at Dipper. When Dipper caught a sight of the shoplifter's face, he froze in pure shock and disbelief. His skin paled. He stuttered. He didn't know what to make of the next situation.

"Wait a minute... _Dipper?!_ "

" _Derrick?!_ "

Derrick chuckled as he took his hood off his head. "What's going on, man?"

* * *

"And that, dudes, concludes this tour of the Mystery Shack," Soos said as he led a crowd of people out of the museum and into the gift shop. "If any of you dudes would be interested in a complimentary souvenir to remember this experience, then you can purchase yourselves a 99 Cent-aur." He raised a small centaur figure that he took from a large box beside him. "By the way, don't get confused by the ninety-nine cents part. It's only the name. They actually cost ten bucks."

"I'll take fifteen!" a man called out from the crowd.

"I'll take thirty for my children!" a woman called out from the crowd.

Soon, the crowd surrounded Soos, waving wads of cash in the air. Mabel and Wendy sat next to the cash register watching him tour, while Waddles sat beside Mabel's seat.

"Wow, Soos is a natural at this," Mabel said, "He's just like Grunkle Stan without the Grunkleiness."

"Yeah, he sure does know how to manage this place," Wendy agreed, "Scamming tourists out of their wallets just by using fake knick-knacks as attractions."

"Ah, just like the good ol' days," Mabel says while leaning herself back against the register counter. "This place really hasn't changed a bit."

Ryland suddenly barged into the gift shop through the main door as if he was in a hurry.

"Ryland, you're late," Wendy reminded him. "Not that it even matters. Anyways, I need you take over on cash register duty."

"Yeah, yeah! Bathroom first!" Ryland dismissed as he hurriedly rushed into the main house through the living room to use the bathroom.

Mabel and Wendy were left sitting at the counter again while Soos continued to deal with customers on his own. Mabel sat thinking about Ryland now that he had arrived.

She had no internal denials that she definitely felt something towards him. The fact was that this was the first time she had found herself smitten by the very presence of a guy in ages. She also knew that she had an internal promise to not go chasing after guys every second she can like she used to and vowed to keep that promise. Ryland was only one guy after all and she was going to make an active chance to get things to work if she could. But she needed to know more about him.

She glanced over at Wendy, tapping her fingers together tentatively. "So, uh, Wendy? I have a bit of a question."

"I'm all ears, man," Wendy said, listening in on her intently. "Hit me with it."

"So, like, that Ryland guy?" Mabel began. "You seem like you know him pretty well. I was wondering if, ya know, you could fill me in a bit? Ya know, because he'll be around all summer and stuff and it's probably for the best that I get to know him a bit better so things aren't all awkward and stuff."

Wendy smirked as she raised an eyebrow suspiciously. "Are you sure that's the reason?"

Mabel blushed, realizing that she's onto her. "You're not buying it for a second, are you?"

"Absolutely not."

"ALRIGHT FINE! I'm guilty of...you-know-what," Mabel admitted.

"Ooooh, Mabel's got a crush!" Wendy teased, playfully rubbing the top of Mabel's head, causing her to smile embarrassedly. "So...Ryland, huh? Interesting."

"What's he like?" Mabel asked.

"Well, I've already told you he's cool," Wendy said. "He's also seventeen. And lucky for you, he's totally single."

"That's always a plus," Mabel chuckled.

"Let's see," Wendy said, trying to think about it. "He's super laid-back. He's not an idiot, but he's no Einstein either. He's really into sports. But his favorite thing is BMXing."

"BMXing?" Mabel repeated, wondering about it.

"Hell yeah, man," Wendy said. "And he's great at it too. You should ask to see his tricks. That'll win him over. In fact, I'll leave the two of you alone when he takes over on cash register."

"Really?" Mabel said. "Thanks Wendy!"

"Of course, man," Wendy said. "Ryland's a pretty normal guy, but he isn't exactly the greatest with hints and that type of junk. So don't go overboard or anything. Just be yourself, ya know? He'll like you for you."

"Be myself," Mabel echoed. "Got it!"

Ryland then popped back out of the living room into the gift shop.

"Alright, I'm here!" Ryland announced as he walked over to the counter.

Wendy stood up from the cash register. "Hey Ryland, Soos asked me to do a thing in the museum. So I'm gonna leave you here with Mabel if that's alright with you."

"Yeah, no problem," Ryland shrugged acceptingly. As Wendy stepped from behind the counter, he got behind and sat in her seat beside Mabel.

"Alright, cool," Wendy said, walking into the museum. She turned her head back toward Mabel and gave her a thumbs-up and Mabel gave her a thumbs-up back. Wendy then submerged behind the museum curtains, leaving Mabel alone with Ryland.

Mabel glanced over at Ryland. She cleared her throat. "So how long have you been in Gravity Falls?"

"Since January," Ryland answered. "Yeah, me, my parents and little brother moved here because my dad got a pretty good job working on drones. Before that, we were in Portland for most of my life. But I was actually born in Paris."

"Ooooh, Paris," Mabel said, intrigued. Remembering how she took French class during her Sophomore year, she figured this was a moment to put her skills to use. " _Comme c'est romantique!_ "

"I...I'm sorry?" Ryland asked, not understanding her.

"That was French," Mabel said.

"Oh, no.  _I_  don't speak it," Ryland clarified. "I was only there for like a year and a half before we moved to the states."

"Oh," Mabel said, somewhat embarrassed by her presumption.

"GAH!" Ryland exclaimed in fear as he looked down at his feet. Mabel looked down and noticed Waddles sniffing Ryland's feet. "Well, that's a pig!"

"Waddles!" Mabel exclaimed. She picked him up and placed him out of the way. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean for him to scare you!"

"No, it's fine," he chuckled. "I just wasn't aware that there was a large pig around here. He's cool though." He looked over the counter to check Waddles out again. "What'd you say his name was again?"

"Waddles," Mabel repeated.

"Waddles," Ryland echoed. "Why'd you name him that?"

"Because," she began, picking up Waddles. She started shaking him around. "He waaaaa-dddllleeesss!"

The two broke out laughing. Mabel set Waddles back on the ground and he walked off.

"That's funny," Ryland complimented as he calmed down from laughing. "You know, Soos said you were the funny one. He ain't wrong so far."

Mabel blushed. "Compared to Dipper? Yeah, I think even the most lifeless office workers are funnier than him."

"Wow," Ryland said. "That bad, huh?"

"Humor-wise? Yeah," Mabel said. "But, he's a really great brother. For the most part. Of course, he can be really annoying sometimes. But overall, I wouldn't ask for a better sibling."

"Lucky you," Ryland pouted. "My little brother is nothing but annoying. Always glued to his computer, always making noise in his room, and always bugging me and telling me to check his games out. My parents always support it for some reason and are always forcing me to look after him."

"Wow. He sounds like a handful."

"Tell me about it," Ryland said, rolling his eyes at the thought. "Anyways, enough about me. Tell me about you and your brother."

"Alright," Mabel said, adjusting herself comfortably in her seat. "What do you want to know?"

"Well, Soos and Wendy always go on about how awesome you two are and all the things you guys did back in 2012," Ryland explained. "Tell me about those things."

"Well, uh, we did some great things, like, uh," Mabel began, trying to think of past summer moments. She wanted to think of things that made her sound impressive to Ryland.

One of the first memories that came to mind was the first gnome encounter, an obvious topic when it came to talking about their first Gravity Falls trip. However, when she realized the circumstances behind that event involved her dating a bunch of gnomes disguised as a human only to be kidnapped by said gnomes, she felt it was best to skip that one.

The next memory that came to mind was meeting Gideon. She felt as though he was a topic that she had to mention. However, she quickly remembered that if she were to go into detail about their first meeting, she'd be pinning a lot on herself. This was a topic she considered skipping too.

Another memory was meeting Mermando, although considering she's trying to talk to a boy that she likes, this one was skippable for obvious reasons.

Then there was the whole Sev'ral Timez fiasco. She considered skipping this one as well for how ill-mannered she was.

And then there was also Gabe and the puppet show...another memory to skip for obvious reasons.

She continued to cycle through memories one by one but realized she was keeping Ryland waiting for what should be considered an easy answer for her. But everything she thought of painted her in a bad light or was one of her many crush incidents, which dare she speak of in front of her new crush.

She then had an idea. One that she admittedly wasn't too proud of, but it was still an idea.

"Well, there was this one time we encountered gnomes," Mabel began.

"Gnomes?" Ryland asked, raising an eyebrow. "You're kidding, right?"

"What? No!" Mabel said. "I understand you've only been here since January, but this town is a lot weirder than you think! Have Soos and Wendy not mentioned this?"

"Well, they told me this town is really weird," Ryland explained. "But nothing along the lines of...gnomes…"

"Trust me," Mabel said. "I couldn't make this up if I wanted to."

"Wow," Ryland said, shaking his head. "Just...how even?"

"Well, it's a funny story," Mabel began. "My brother fell for this girl named, uh, Nora. Anyways, they went on a date, and it turned out that 'Nora' was actually a bunch of gnomes dressed as a human girl in disguise. They were looking for a new queen and they must've got his prepubescent girl voice confused and thought he was a girl and wanted him to their new queen. Then when he denied, they kidnapped him!"

"Woah," Ryland said, raising his eyebrows in shock. "What happened next?"

"Well, I had to rescue him, of course," Mabel answered. "I got in a golf cart and found him. We tried to escape but then the gnomes banded together to form one giant gnome monster! Just when all hope seemed lost, I managed to defeat them with the help of, um, a...fire-breathing dragon!"

"No way," Ryland said in disbelief, yet with a smile.

"It's true!" Mabel went on. "I tamed one with my...dragon-taming skills...and it just swooped in. It set the gnomes on fire and they ran away."

"You have dragon-taming skills?" Ryland asked. "That's amazing."

"Yeah, but I, unfortunately, had to let my dragon back into the wild. They're a hassle to take care of! They're not like good ol' Waddles here."

"I'd imagine they'd be difficult to take care of," Ryland said, thinking about it. "But that's a crazy story! And dragon-taming is something you gotta show me."

"Maybe some other time. It's been four years after all. I am a little off with my skills," Mabel put off, not really wanting to risk blowing her cover at the moment. "In the meantime, how about you show me some of those BMX skills that I've heard about?" The question brought an instant smile to Ryland's face.

* * *

Back in Tons, Dipper handed the stolen loaf of bread back to Dalton, who stood beside a cart filled with bags of all the things Dipper purchased.

"I'm sorry about the trouble again, Mr. Dalton," Dipper said, rubbing his arm.

"Nonsense, Dipper," Dalton said. "You didn't have to do this for me, but you did it anyway. I can't say it did much, but I very much appreciate today's effort. Here."

Dalton handed Dipper a small slip of paper. Dipper examined it and raised an eyebrow.

"A coupon for a free cologne of choice?" Dipper questioned.

"Yep," Dalton assured gleefully. "From the short time I've been around you today, I can assure you that you'll need it."

Dipper's eyes narrowed, somewhat annoyed. "Gee, thanks, Mr. Dalton."

"No problem, kiddo," Dalton said, patting Dipper on the back. "If you ever need anything, you know where to find me."

Dipper nodded and began pushing his cart of groceries. He got outside and began making his way to Soos' pickup, but was greeted by Derrick again.

"Dipper! It's been like what? Like a day or two? How've you been, man?" Derrick asked in an amiable manner.

Dipper ignored him and kept pushing his cart away. Derrick sighed.

"Alright, seriously man," Derrick began. "You busted me for a loaf of bread."

Dipper turned around and faced him angrily. "You stole that loaf of bread from an old man's store!"

"And?" Derrick asked, not seeing the issue. "It's how I always get my groceries. It's nothing new. I thought you knew this."

"No. I didn't," Dipper told him. "It's not like I've ever seen you go grocery shopping before. Either way, it's still wrong."

"We used to steal sodas and snacks from school vending machines, but me stealing a loaf of bread from an old man's store is wrong?"

"I mean, the sodas and snacks thing is wrong too but…" Dipper began.

"As long as it doesn't affect someone you care about, it's fine. Right?" Derrick asked, crossing his arms.

Dipper sighed, realizing the hypocrisy of his argument. Before he could think of a counter, his mind drifted to a more important subject.

"Wait a second, what are even you doing here in Gravity Falls?" Dipper asked.

"I, uh, may have done some bad things back in Piedmont and got in some pretty bad trouble for it," Derrick explained, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly.

"Bad things like what?"

"I don't have to answer that," Derrick said defensively. "Let's just say it was bad enough that my dad got pretty upset; no surprise there. Anyways, as a means of punishing me and not wanting to deal with me, he sent me over to stay with my granddad here in Gravity Falls."

"Oh, right. The spork guy," Dipper said, remembering one of their final conversations before his departure.

"Yep," Derrick confirmed. "One of the first things I would've done was call to let you know I was in town, but another part of my grand punishment was 'no phones'. And because I didn't remember your number, I basically had no means of being able to contact you." Derrick then smiled and put his arm around Dipper's neck and gave him a noogie. "But hey, it's not like that matters now, huh?"

Dipper pushed Derrick off him, though not in the same friendly manner that Derrick displayed. "Look man, don't get me wrong. I'm glad to see you and I'm stoked we can hang out this summer, but Gravity Falls isn't Piedmont. The idea that your dad had to send you away sucks, but can you try to make an effort to leave all your bad habits and behaviors back home?"

"Why? What's so special about this town that needs me to act like a different person?" Derrick asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm not asking you to act like a different person," Dipper told him. "I'm asking you to try to make a change. For the better."

"Those two don't sound much different."

"Dude, it's just…" Dipper began, trying to find a way to word his next statement. "This town just isn't like any other town. The people. The places. The environment. It's just all just not as accepting of the kinda things you're used to doing. It's a sleepy town. You come across the same people just about all the time. You're not gonna get very far around here if you act like this is home."

Derrick sighed as he leaned against a pole. "Look, I'm sorry about the bread. And I'm sorry that you know me as this delinquent friend whose life is lived by getting into constant trouble. I guess I do wanna try and change my ways, but it's people like my dad that make it so hard to do so."

Derrick picked up a rock and threw it up in the air in frustration, sending it across the parking lot. Within seconds, a car alarm went off in the distance. Dipper looked back at him and sighed.

"Well, maybe in these three months you're away from him, you can finally make that change?" he suggested with a sympathetic smile.

Derrick sighed. "Maybe. I'll need help though."

"Hey man, whatever happens, we'll go through it together," Dipper said, lightly punching him in the shoulder. "I'll make sure to keep you in line."

"Really?" Derrick asked, smiling.

"Of course!" Dipper exclaimed. "You've been my best friend since eighth grade. You've saved me from bullies. You've seen me get rejected by a dozen girls and still, you back me up. My sister aside, you've been my only real friend in recent times. After all that you've done for me, let me do something for you."

Dipper offered his hand out for Derrick. Derrick thought for a moment before taking a deep breath. He smiled and shook Dipper's hand.

"Alright, brother," Derrick settled as the two shook hands. "I'm in."

"Right on, man," Dipper said with a smile as the two pulled their hands back.

Derrick stuffed his hands back in his pockets and looked around the place. "So, this is Gravity Falls, huh?"

"Indeed it is," Dipper confirmed. He took Soos' pickup keys out of his pocket and spun them around his finger as he gestured toward the truck itself in the distance. "Want me to take you on a quick spin around?"

Derrick's eyes bulged at the sight of the keys and the truck. "No way. You never said you got a car."

"Well, I didn't," Dipper corrected. "But I was told that I get to borrow it whenever I'd like this summer."

"Nice," Derrick said, nodding his head admiringly as the two continued to walk toward the pickup. "I got the feeling that this is gonna be quite the summer."

"Oh, I think you'll be quite surprised, my friend."


	7. Where the Weirdness Happens: Part 2

Ryland was speeding through the forest on his BMX bike. The terrain was rough and rocky, with plenty of logs and stumps also among his path. He swiftly avoided every obstacle in his path by riding around them or hopping over them. He kept pedaling fast as he neared the outside of the forest. In his path was one large tree stump, and he only pedaled faster. Sweat dripped down his face as he got closer and closer to the stump.

Once he was close enough, he hopped and performed a 360-degree tailwhip as he flew right over the stump before landing back on the ground in a normal position and riding off. He rode his bike and parked right in front of the Mystery Shack's porch, where Mabel stood watching him. She displayed a look of disbelief with her mouth agape, but her bewildered expression turned into a joyful and positive one.

"WOO!" she cheered, clapping her hands together, commending him. "Go Ryland!"

Ryland smiled as he got off his bike. He walked over to the porch and grabbed a water bottle as he sat beside Mabel.

"So what'd you think?" he asked as he took a sip of water.

"That was amazing!" Mabel praised. "You're, like, as good as all those other bikers on TV!"

Ryland chuckled as he put a cap on his water bottle. "I wouldn't say I'm  _that_ good, but thanks."

"And how long did you say you've been doing this?" Mabel asked.

"I've been biking for as long as I can remember, but I didn't get into BMXing until I was twelve," Ryland explained as he wiped the sweat off his face with a towel he grabbed from the side.

"Five years," Mabel summed up. "Now  _that's_ impressive!"

"It's a lot of practice," Ryland told her. "And it hasn't all been incredibly kind on me." He rolled up his right sleeve and revealed a scar under his forearm. "That trick I just showed you? I got this the first time I ever tried it."

"Woah," Mabel awed as she looked at his scar. The scar was long and had the color of a faded red. It was very angular and perfectly shaped for a scar. It was best described as something like a very wide and short triangle on its side. "That's scary."

"Meh," Ryland shrugged, rolling his sleeve back up. "Believe it or not, I actually have worse ones than that. But I don't think showing my bad scars is the right way to go about first impressions."

Mabel giggled. "Well, it's not like I mind." Quickly realizing what she just said, she purposefully started violently coughing in an attempt to immediately distract him from her embarrassing words.

"Are you alright?" Ryland asked, raising an eyebrow in concern.

"I am now," Mabel replied, smiling brightly at him.

"Ya know, you're pretty cool, Mabel," Ryland complimented with a smile. "I've never met a girl as funny and accepting as you are, more so one who can tame fire-breathing dragons!"

Mabel smiled nervously. "Yeah, how about less so on the dragon part?" She was trying to divert his attention and emphasis on her made-up skills that she really didn't want to direct more attention to.

"It sounds so cool though!" Ryland exclaimed excitedly. "I mean...frickin' dragons! In Gravity Falls! That's awesome! Seriously, as long as we're hanging out this summer, that's something you gotta show me!"

Mabel laughed nervously at his suggestion. On one hand, she was happy that Ryland was implying that they would be hanging out often that summer. On the other hand, she was getting nervous about how adamant he's getting about wanting her to show him non-existent dragons in the town. She's starting to have her regrets about her alterations to the gnome story, although she was never proud of the initial decision to do so anyway.

"How about you just show me more of your BMX tricks for now?" Mabel nervously suggested, hoping to further divert from the dragon topic.

"What's up, dudes?" Soos asked as he suddenly stepped out of the Shack onto the porch. Wendy followed right behind him. He walked up and sat right in between Mabel and Ryland. "Tour just ended. What are you guys up to?"

"I was showing Mabel a few of my BMX tricks," Ryland told him. "She told me earlier about that one time when her brother got kidnapped by gnomes and she defeated them with a fire-breathing dragon that she tamed!"

 _Oh #% &$_, Mabel thought to herself as she felt her skin go cold.

"Huh, really?" Soos asked, scratching his head. He turned over to Mabel. "I thought that it you who was kid-"

"-ing about it being a fire-breathing dragon?" Mabel finished, cutting Soos off by placing her hand directly over his mouth. "Yeah! I was! It was actually a normal dragon. I just added the fire-breathing part to enhance the story a bit. Fire-breathing dragons don't actually exist. I'm sorry, Ryland."

Wendy raised an eyebrow suspiciously as she continued to listen in on what Mabel was saying.

"Oh," Ryland said in a somewhat disappointed tone but smiled. "It's cool. I mean, a dragon is a dragon. That's still an awesome story!"

"Heck yeah, dude!" Soos agreed excitedly. "Who knew there were dragons in Gravity Falls? I gotta ask Melody if she'd be cool with keeping one."

Soos got up from the porch steps and ran inside the Shack, shouting for Melody. Wendy then walked up to the two.

"Hey dorks," she called as she walked past them down the porch steps. She turned back toward Mabel. "Mabel, mind if I borrow you for a minute?"

"Sure!" Mabel said, standing up from the porch and following Wendy as she walked to the side of the Shack. She looked back at Ryland and gave him a quick gesture that she was going to be a moment, to which he nodded understandably.

The two girls reached the side of the Shack, giving them slight privacy to talk away from Ryland or anyone else.

"What's up?" Mabel asked innocently.

"Oh, nothing," Wendy said, crossing her arms. "But you know, as long as we're here, I kinda feel like hunting dragons and I feel like you're the best person to ask where I can find them."

Mabel sighed. She knew that Wendy was, once again, onto her. "Alright! You got me! I made the dragons part up!"

"Dude, you, like, completely changed the story," Wendy accused. "You're telling Ryland that Dipper got kidnapped instead of you? What are you trying to prove?"

"That I'm not such a screw-up!" Mabel exclaimed. "I didn't want to lie to him, but when he wanted to hear about me, I couldn't think of something that didn't make me look bad or something that didn't involve one of my previous dumb crushes! So...I kinda tweaked the story a little."

"Mabel…" Wendy said with a facepalm. "Ryland's like the most average guy there is. He's not the type of guy to wanna go around picking out your flaws. Besides, you're a great person! You have nothing to be so insecure about."

"Psht! I'm not insecure!" Mabel nervously laughed. "Mabel Pines is not insecure! She's strong, confident, and above all, outgoing!"

"So you're gonna tell Ryland the truth?" Wendy asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Of course!" Mabel assured, glancing to the side hesitantly. "Eventually..."

"Well, this is your love life, not mine," Wendy began, beginning to walk off. "So I'll let you handle it. But if I were you, I'd just tell him the truth. Trust me when I say you really don't have anything to lose here. Not now, at least."

As Mabel looked back at her and thought over what she said, Soos' pickup suddenly drove into the lot and pulled up in front of the Shack's porch, grabbing their attention as well as Ryland's.

"Looks like your brother's back," Wendy said as she began to make her way back over to the porch again. Mabel stood back with her arms crossed, considering everything that she had told her.

Soos walked back out of the Shack and stood behind Ryland, watching as Dipper and Derrick both hopped out of the truck and shut the doors behind them.

"So, how was it, dude?" Soos called out to Dipper.

"Man, it honestly feels great to ride around the Falls on my own," Dipper said as he grabbed a few bags of groceries from the backseat.

Wendy spotted Derrick with his hands in his pockets stood beside Dipper. "Erm...on your own?"

Dipper looked over at Derrick and realized what she was getting at. "Oh, my bad. Guys, I'd like you two to meet my best friend from Piedmont, Derrick Mendez."

Derrick raised a hand out of his pocket and waved. "Sup."

"Derrick, I'd like you to meet my other friends. This is Wendy," he said gesturing toward Wendy.

Wendy then chuckled as she scanned Derrick's appearance. "He kinda reminds me of Robbie, but like fifty-percent less emo."

"I...have no idea how to respond to that," Derrick replied, confused.

"Don't worry, man," Dipper chuckled. "Wendy's cool. I've told you about her before, remember?"

"Oh wait," Derrick said upon the realization of who Wendy was. "Isn't she-?"

"Yes," Dipper cut off in a deep, monotone tone as he lowered his eyebrows warningly. He knew everything that he had told Derrick about in regards to his history with Wendy and didn't need him repeating it all aloud in front of her.

"Gotcha," Derrick said, grinning.

"Anyways," Dipper said, quickly trying to change the subject. He walked over to Soos. "This is Soos." He then held out the bags of groceries toward Soos. "Here's your groceries, by the way, man."

"Aw man! Thanks a ton, dawg!" Soos said, holding the bags within his arm. He held out his other hand toward Derrick to shake. "And it's nice to meet you, Derrick. It's good to see that Dipper actually  _does_  have friends in Piedmont. Heh."

"Wow," Derrick said, looking back at Dipper as he shook Soos' hand. "Exactly as you described him!"

Dipper sighed in annoyance by what Soos said. "Moving on…" He walked up to the porch where Ryland sat. "This is Ryland, a worker here at the Shack. And we, uh, kinda just met last night."

Ryland stood up and offered his hand to Derrick. "Yeah, but it's still nice to meet you. We'll probably get to know each other soon enough. I've actually just been spending the day getting to know Mabel."

"Did someone say Mabel?" Mabel asked as she suddenly jumped into the scene with glee.

"Hey, there you are," Ryland pointed out.

"How was the drive, bro-br-?" she began, before her eyes drifted from Dipper to Derrick, realizing his presence. Her eyes bulged and her eyebrows titled angrily. "What's  _he_ doing here?!"

"Oh boy…" Derrick groaned in response.

Dipper's eyes bulged as well upon remembering the bad blood between his sister and Derrick. "Oh no. Mabel, stay calm."

"Stay calm?!" Mabel said as she stomped and walked up in Dipper's face angrily. "You know one of the reasons I was looking forward to this summer was so I could get a break from  _him_ , right?"

"Gee, glad to know you feel the same way, Sparkles," Derrick said in a sarcastic tone, rolling his eyes.

"Why are you here?!" Mabel asked angrily as she turned toward him. "Why is that every time we go someplace, you're somehow magically there too? Why can't you just stay home? Or better yet: a jail cell?"

"Mabel, please," Dipper pleaded, attempting to intervene.

"Please," Derrick said, continuing to further the argument. "If anyone belongs in a jail cell, it's you because of the blinding amount of glitter you always wear."

"Derrick..." Dipper pleaded. He looked to the side and saw how uncomfortable Soos, Wendy, and Ryland appeared as the other two continued to bicker.

"Should we, uh, give you guys some space?" Wendy awkwardly asked.

"What's with those two?" Soos asked.

Dipper sighed irritably. "I don't know. They've always hated each other. All because of a spilled soda accident that neither of them responded well to."

"What do they even hate about each other?" Ryland asked.

"Everything."

"Oh right, because making fun of the amount of glitter I wear is so original," Mabel scoffed at Derrick, with everyone else diverting their focus back toward the two.

"Want an original insult?" Derrick asked indignantly. "How about the fact that you're a huge b-"

"ENOUGH!" Dipper burst, startling the two. "BOTH OF YOU! I'm so sick of being the one who always has to put an end to these stupid fights you guys keep starting. Why can't you two just hate each other in secret or something instead of always making such a huge deal out of every single interaction you guys have?"

"Hate each other in secret?" Derrick asked. "Isn't that what girls do?"

"Dipper, you know how much he irritates me!" Mabel exclaimed in frustration. "Why would you bring him to Gravity Falls?"

"I didn't bring him to Gravity Falls!" Dipper said, appalled by such an improbable idea. "His dad sent him here after he caused trouble back home, which he won't even tell me about for some reason."

Derrick caught Dipper looking over at him. "Trust me, man. Some questions are just better left unanswered."

"Couldn't his dad have just sent him to military camp or something instead?" Mabel suggested.

"Mabel!" Dipper shouted frustratedly. "Alright, that's it! I'm not dealing with this all summer! I'm putting an end to this right now!"

"What are you going to do?" Mabel asked daringly. "Lock us up in a closet and force us to work out our differences?"

"If you lock us in a closet, I can guarantee you there's going to be only one person walking out of there alive," Derrick told Dipper.

"There won't be any closet-locking or anything that will lead to lethal actions," Dipper clarified. "Instead, we're doing something simple. If you both can go the whole summer without fighting, I'll give both of you a hundred bucks. If either of you break into another one of your dumb fights for a reason as stupid as just being in the same room together, then neither of you get anything. That way, there's no use in trying to screw-"

"Done," Derrick immediately agreed to without hesitation.

"Wow, really?" Dipper asked, shocked.

"A hundred bucks is a hundred bucks. Of course I'm in," Derrick said with a light shrug. "Plus, I'm all about making a  _change_ this summer, aren't I? I think that includes putting aside my differences with Sparkles here."

" _You_  making a change?" Mabel asked skeptically. "Ha! I'll believe it when I see it."

"Does that mean you're in?" Dipper asked.

Mabel rolled her eyes. "Fine. I'll do it."

"Good," Dipper said with a grin. "Now shake on it."

Mabel and Derrick stared at Dipper before glancing at each other. They turned away with refusal.

"No way! That wasn't part of the deal," Mabel said, turning her back toward Derrick.

"That's gonna require another hundred bucks right there," Derrick said, turning his back as well.

Dipper grabbed the two and turned them toward each other. "I'm not asking you two to hold hands."

"Dude, that's technically what a handshake is!" Derrick exclaimed, still not keen on the idea of making any physical contact with his most hated enemy.

"Just shake on it or neither of you are getting paid," Dipper said bitterly, simply tired of trying to get things over with.

Mabel and Derrick looked at each other in disgust before slowly protruding their right hands out toward one another. As their hands got closer to one another, they leaned the rest of their bodies back as if they were both preparing to touch a beehive. Their hands then joined for about half a second before they quickly jolted them back in pure revulsion and promptly stepped away from one another.

"That was worse than holding Gideon's hand," Mabel said as she shook her hand around in disgust.

"I'm gonna have to burn this hand when I get the chance," Derrick said as he held onto his right wrist with his other hand.

Dipper ignored their remarks and happily stepped back toward Soos, Wendy, and Ryland. "I guess if there's anything they have in common, it's agreeing to do things for money."

"Geez. Makes me wonder how ugly things could get if those two played against one another in Lario Wagon," Soos asked. "Melody and I usually have our biggest fights playing that game. Imagine what those two would be like."

"After dealing with those two fighting since eighth grade, I'd rather not," Dipper replied. He turned back toward Derrick. "So with all that out of the way, Derrick, what do you think of Gravity Falls?"

"Gotta hand it to ya, Dipper," Derrick said, placing his hands in the pockets of his hoodie as he looked around the forest. "You were right about this place being more interesting than Piedmont."

"I told you!" Dipper exclaimed excitedly. "This place is totally weird! I'm glad you believe me."

"What? I didn't say this place was weird."

"Huh?" Dipper questioned, excitement fading away. "You said this place was-"

" _Interesting_ ," Derrick reiterated. "It's got some cool forests and some unique stores and such. But there's nothing that suggested that the whole  _town_ was weird. The place seems pretty average to me."

"Average? You're telling me Scuttlebutt Island was average? Dusk 2 Dawn was average? The cemetery was average?" Dipper asked, getting slightly infuriated.

"You wanna tell me what's so special about an island in the middle of the lake, a random convenience store and a normal cemetery run by two people who are way happier than anyone should ever be?" Derrick asked, crossing his arms.

"Are you seriously saying that nothing about anything I showed you today was weird to you? Nothing at all?"

"Err, let me think," Derrick said, putting his hand on his chin, "I thought that Toby Determined guy was pretty weird. He's the closest thing to nonhuman I've seen all day. But he's not like any creature you've told me about."

"UGH!" Dipper exclaimed, tugging down on the ears of his hat in frustration. He looked around at the others. "Can  _any_ of you  _please_ back me up here? Tell him that I'm not lying! Tell him we actually saw these things!"

"Well, I obviously support you," Mabel pitched in. "But I'm also the last person he'd ever believe, so what use is my word?"

"Look, Derrick, dude," Soos said as he walked up to Derrick. "I know you're new here and all, but you gotta believe us. We've seen some spooky stuff around here, dawg."

"Yeah, man," Wendy said, standing beside Soos. "Dipper's not lying here. This town looks pretty normal at first glance. Well, for the most part. But if you dig deeper, you're going to find a lot of the really weird stuff that this town has to offer."

Dipper glanced over at Ryland and noticed he wasn't stepping up. "C'mon, Ryland. You've been here for a couple of months now, right? Surely you've seen some weirdness around here."

Ryland shook his head. "I'm sorry, Dipper. I'm afraid I'm kinda in the same boat as Derrick where I haven't seen anything strange around here. I spend all my time either at home, school, work or at the BMX park. All of it couldn't be any more average."

"It seems like we have an outlier," Derrick said as he smirked at Dipper.

"But it's not like I don't believe you guys, necessarily," Ryland clarified. "I mean, I've been talking to Mabel today and she told me about that one time with the gnomes and the dra-"

"-drag it was to deal with them!" Mabel cut off with an awkward laugh. Ryland looked over at her with slight confusion at first before just going with it.

"That's it!" Dipper shouted confidently as an idea had apparently struck him. He ran off the porch and walked in the direction of the open woods. He looked over at Derrick. "Since I'm still not any closer to convincing you this town is weird, why don't we take a trip into the forest and I'll show you Gravity Falls weirdness firsthand?"

"That doesn't sound weird or creepy at all," Derrick sarcastically remarked. He then shrugged as he stepped off the porch and walked up to him. "But if you insist."

Dipper looked back toward Mabel, Ryland, Wendy, and Soos on the porch. "Anyone else want in?"

"I'd love to, dudes," Soos said as he stood up in a heroic pose. "But Mr. Mystery is calling my name! Not literally since, ya know, I am Mr. Mystery. Point is I got work here. You dudes have fun though!"

As Soos walked inside, Wendy began to follow him. "Ya know, now that I think about it, today isn't really one of those slacking off-kinda days for me. Maybe next time you guys go on a crazy adventure! Just try not to get eaten alive and stuff."

She then walked inside along with Soos, leaving Dipper and Mabel to raise their eyebrows curiously in response to her behavior.

"Huh. Wendy not wanting to slack off? That's...different," Dipper analyzed.

Mabel turned back and directed her attention back at Dipper. "Well, as for me, I think I'm just gonna hang back here at the Shack with Ryland."

"I don't know," Ryland said, putting his bike to the side. "I kinda want in."

"What? Really?" Mabel asked, somewhat unenthused.

"Yeah!" Ryland exclaimed excitedly. "I mean, it's a chance for me to see weirdness for the first time as well! This could be awesome! Why don't we both join them?"

"Uhh, sure! I guess," Mabel replied with a fake smile, but her tone all the more reluctant.

Ryland turned toward Dipper. "We're in!"

"The more, the merrier!" Dipper claimed enthusiastically as he began to walk toward the woods again. "C'mon, let's get going. I wanna try to make it back before sunset." Derrick followed him, while Mabel and Ryland stood back for a moment. Soon they stepped off the porch and slowly began to follow along.

Ryland turned back toward Mabel as he kept walking. "Maybe we'll see a dragon along the way."

Mabel stopped walking and stood still for a moment while Ryland continued to proceed forward into the woods without noticing. After standing alone for a brief moment, she sighed in annoyance and continued to slowly trudge behind the others.

"As cute as he is, even  _I'm_ starting to get annoyed by how many times he says 'dragon'."

* * *

Mabel, Ryland, and Derrick were walking steadily through the woods behind Dipper. He studied the area as they walked, glancing around in every direction. He suddenly came to a halt and began to examine the surroundings closely. The others stopped behind him and waited for a response.

"How much further until we get there? I didn't anticipate this much walking," Derrick complained.

"If that's the case, you're gonna hate hanging out with us this summer," Dipper stated.

"I already hate agreeing to this," Derrick replied.

"Dipper, where are we even going?" Mabel asked as she looked around the area. "I don't see what's so special about this part of the woods."

"Hang on," Dipper said, raising his finger commandingly.

He scanned the grass and noticed a pine cone flat in the middle of the edge and stepped forward to pick it up. He examined it closely but found it to be nothing less than a regular pine cone. He threw it back on the ground and took a step toward to the right.

"This way," Dipper said as he began walking again in the right direction of the woods. The others began to follow again.

"So do you mind telling us exactly what we're looking for?" Derrick asked.

"You'll see," Dipper told him as they continued to walk.

"I don't mean to sound like a wisecracker, but what exactly will I see?" Derrick asked.

" _SHHHH!_ " Dipper shushed suddenly, coming to a complete stop again.

The others behind him stopped as well and looked around instinctively. Dipper scanned the woods once more with his complete and total focus. They heard something and he thought he had an idea of what it was, but the rest of the group couldn't pinpoint it.

"What are we standing here for?" Derrick whispered.

"What part of  _'SHHH!'_  do you not understand?" Dipper whispered back aggressively, prompting Derrick to raise his hands up defensively.

Dipper continued glancing his eyes around until his eyes fell upon a certain object. It was a dark red, pointy hat with many scratches and dirt among it. It stuck out of a short bush just a few feet away from the group. Dipper stared at it, studying it from the short distance.

"Guys, look at that thing popping out of the bush over there," Dipper whispered toward the rest of the group, pointing toward the hat.

Ryland squinted over at the object Dipper is pointing toward, and whispered back, "It looks like…a cone?"

"I bet it's some sort of magical cone," Derrick sarcastically replied. Despite Ryland's significantly greater amount of enthusiasm for the current adventure than Derrick, he couldn't help but snicker at his sarcastic humor.

Mabel looked over at the cone as well and her eyes bulged. "Dipper, is that a…?"

"I think it is, Mabel," Dipper whispered back, smiling.

"Oh, for the love of..." Derrick said, breaking out of his whisper. "What is it, Dipper?!"

The red hat suddenly started moving away from the group at a fast speed in response to Derrick's outburst.

"You idiot!" Dipper shouted angrily at Derrick. "Now, it's running away!" Dipper started to run after the fleeing hat.

"The cone is running away?" Ryland said, confused and somewhat stunned.

"Honestly, I'm a little shocked by that too," Derrick admitted.

"Don't just stand here!" Mabel shouted at both of them, following Dipper in his pursuit for the cone. "Come on!" Derrick and Ryland looked at each other before running along with the two.

The hat was moving fast and kept scurrying through nothing but bushes. Dipper kept sprinting after it as fast as he could. The natural terrain of trees, logs, and slopes, however, kept messing with his movement and speed as he tried his hardest to keep up with the cone, who was moving masterfully through the same terrain.

As he got closer, Dipper soon realized he was in a close enough range to close the gap between the two and end his second chase of the day. He ran for a few seconds more before leaping forward and grabbing a hold of the hat. He rolled over into a flatter, more open area of the woods while keeping a hold of the hat.

"Got it!" Dipper shouted out back as Mabel, Derrick, and Ryland caught up.

"Damn, Dipper," Derrick stated, trying to catch his breath. "That's twice in one day. Seriously dude, you should consider trying out for track next year."

"What'd you catch?" Ryland asked, panting.

Dipper lifted up the dark red hat from the ground, which was revealed to be the pointy hat belonging to a big-bearded gnome, who wore blue overalls and a red-sleeved shirt underneath.

"Release me, human!" the gnome demanded while struggling to get out of Dipper's grasp.

Dipper raised the gnome in front of Mabel, Derrick, and Ryland. "My friends, I present to you: a local Gravity Falls gnome."

Mabel appeared unfazed as she looked at the gnome, having seen them plenty of times in her life before, and none of those occasions being particularly pleasant. For someone who hasn't seen gnomes before, Derrick looked more confused rather than surprised, as if he was thinking of the whole situation in depth.

"Woah," Ryland awed as he brought his face up close to it. "It's so small. It's kinda cute actually."

"Cute? I'm a Timberland Gnome!" the gnome shouted. "Are you aware of how dangerous we are?"

"Ha! Its voice is funny!" Ryland chuckled as he looked back up at Dipper. "You got captured by these things? They look almost harmless."

Upon hearing this, Mabel quickly turned away from the others, trying to hide her guiltiness incase she was to be called out. Dipper raised an eyebrow in confusion at Ryland's presumption of him getting captured by the gnomes. "Wait, what?"

"Human!" the gnome intervened angrily. "This is your final warning! Release me now or suffer the wrath of the Timberland Gnomes!"

"Relax, man," Dipper calmly replied. "I'm just proving that you exist to my friends."

"That's it!" the gnome lashed. "You still haven't released me and I will no longer stand for it!"

The gnome pulled out a ram's horn from its overalls, put it up to his mouth, and blew hard. The horn sent out a large sound that echoed throughout the woods. In an instant, the ground began to vibrate hard and the bushes began trembling in response. Suddenly, waves of red-sleeved gnomes began rushing in from the bushes, holding pine cone spears pointed at Dipper, Mabel, Derrick, and Ryland.

Shocked by the sudden waves of gnomes that just appeared, Dipper instinctively dropped the gnome he was holding and looked around at the dozens, maybe even hundreds, of gnomes surrounding them. The gnome he dropped scurried away into the surrounding gnomes. An individual gnome stepped out from the group with a white hat instead of red.

"Who blew the Horn of Sacred Woods?" the white hat gnome asked.

"It was me, Sir Thomas the Great," said the gnome that Dipper had previously held, who kneeled before the white hat gnome. "These humans had picked me up and were examining me! Calling me cute and harmless! Saying my voice was funny! I've never been more insulted in my life!"

The white hat gnome looked over at Dipper, Mabel, Derrick and Ryland and stepped forward toward them.

"Hey," Dipper intervened. "Listen, we didn't mean to cause this much trouble. I was just trying to prove to my friends here that you all…well…exist," Dipper explained, raising his hands up innocently. "But you know, we see you all now and I'm sure we've seen more than enough to believe that the weirdness is weird, right guys?"

"Hell yeah! This is so rad!" Ryland replied gleefully.

"Pfft, are you kidding?" Derrick scoffed. "These are gnomes?"

"What? You still don't believe me?" Dipper asked, clenching his fists.

"Dipper, they're just a bunch of tiny people with beards," Derrick stated, all the gnomes gasping in response. "Obviously, you set this up to get me to believe in Gravity Falls weirdness. While it's a good effort, I still don't buy it."

"You think this is a set up?!" Dipper asked, infuriated.

"Are you really that stupid?" Mabel asked, starting to get fed up herself.

"Dude, c'mon. This is legitimate," Ryland calmly pitched in as well.

"I'm not stupid, guys. I know you're all just messing with me," Derrick continued to deny. "C'mon, joke's over. Let's head back to the Shack."

Derrick began to walk away, but a group of gnomes pointed their pine cone spears at him, bringing him to a halt.

"Did you seriously just insult us gnomes by calling us 'tiny people with beards'?" Thomas the Great asked as he approached him.

"I'm sorry, and your name is?" Derrick asked.

"I am Sir Thomas the Great," the gnome introduced. "I am the leader of the Timberland Gnomes. And we don't take very kindly to you humans. But we're even less kind to those who insult us and our presence."

"Dude, c'mon," Derrick chuckled. "This has gone on long enough. I'm not falling for this 'gnome' business anymore."

"How inattentive can you be, human?" Thomas the Great asked, getting impatient. "You are surrounded by an entire army of my Timberland Gnomes and you believe this is nothing but a game?"

"It's not that I believe it's a game. It is a game," Derrick clarified. "And you guys are playing well, so kudos for that. But if you don't mind, I've had enough playing around. So if you would let me go, that would be really appreciated."

Derrick attempted to walk even further but was pushed back by the gnomes with pine cone spears. They began walking toward him, pushing him back further and causing him to fall back on his rear.

"Dipper, do you wanna tell these guys to break character and that it's all over? I'm tired of this," Derrick asked, getting annoyed.

"We're telling you, this isn't a game! These are real gnomes. Stop being so stubborn and just listen to us!" Dipper shouted back at him.

"This human's lack of belief in our presence insults me," Thomas the Great told the rest of the gnomes. "I wish to dispose of him and the rest of his putrid friends that he came along with."

"Sir, you wish to bring in the Guardian of the Gnomes?" asked the gnome that Dipper held before.

"I do," Thomas the Great confirmed with a sinister smile. "Bring in the Guardian of the Gnomes!"

A group of gnomes suddenly appeared and made their way to the circle of the gnomes, lifting a giant cage while walking in the circle. The circling gnomes stood back to make room for the gnomes walking in with the cage. Dipper, Mabel, and Ryland slowly walked back in fear, while Derrick just stood in place, completely unfazed by the current events transpiring. Dipper turned his head behind him to look for a possible escape, but there was nothing but rows of gnomes holding pine cone spears behind them.

"Mabel, what's happening?" Ryland whispered over to her, frightened.

"I don't know," Mabel answered, also frightened. "This is totally new. But I really don't where this is going."

The gnomes set the cage down and stood back. A separate group of gnomes created a totem among each other and opened up the cage's many latches from top to bottom. Once completely unlatched, the gnomes deconstructed their totem and backed away. The cage was mostly overshadowed by darkness from the many shadows made by the trees, making whatever that was inside the cage impossible to identify through the darkness. A faint growling, however, was soon heard from the inside.

A single gnome quickly ran up to the front of the open cage and called out to the creature inside. He put his hands forward and gestured for whatever was inside to come out. "Here, girl! Come out! It's okay."

The growling got louder and the creature's footsteps got louder as it got closer to the exit of the cage. A strange feeling of warmth and heat suddenly filled the air as the creature in the cage got closer. The single gnome quickly ran back into its place with the rest of the gnomes as the giant creature stepped out of the cage and into the daylight. Dipper, Mabel, and Ryland stepped back even further once they finally got a glimpse of what the Guardian of the Gnomes was, which was revealed to be a big, dark red dragon.

"No way," Mabel said as her eyes bulged in disbelief.

"Putrid humans, meet our both literally and figuratively hot Guardian of the Gnomes!" Thomas the Great shouted at the four. The dragon roared loudly in response as smoke steamed from its nostrils.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to artmageddonunicorn for the amazing Derrick design.


	8. Where the Weirdness Happens: Part 3

Dipper, Mabel, and Ryland stared up at the giant red dragon, or the Guardian of the Gnomes, in fear. Derrick, on the other hand, looked at the dragon completely unfazed. The gnomes began to chant various different phrases with the dragon's presence. The dragon's presence also brought different feelings of fear for both Ryland and Mabel, each for very different reasons.

"It's a frickin' dragon," Ryland said blankly, staring up at the dragon in disbelief. "I can't believe it."

"Me neither," Mabel said as she stared at the dragon in complete awe.

"Fear us now, human," Thomas the Great said, targeting Derrick specifically. "For the Guardian of the Gnomes is the greatest ally of the Timberland Gnomes. You four will be burnt to crisps, which is exactly how she likes her meals."

"Woah!" Dipper shouted, stepping forward toward Thomas. "This is out of control! We didn't mean for any of this! Can't you just let us go? We don't want any trouble!"

"It was you who brought yourself trouble, human," Thomas the Great struck back angrily. "You and your friends assaulted and personally examined one of our kind with your repulsive human hands. Your friend here also insulted us by denying our presence."

"And we're sorry for that!" Mabel said, stepping in next to Dipper. "C'mon, there has to be a way to work this out. Humans to gnomes? Gnomes to humans? We're even kinda-sorta friends with one of you other gnome buddies, Jeff."

Thomas the Great and all the surrounding gnomes gasped and started whispering to each other. They all started raising their pine cone spears and made various claims angrily.

"They're friends with Jeff! They must be with him!" one of the surrounding gnomes shouted.

"They're Woodlands!" another gnome called out.

"You dare share relations with that fiend, Jeff?" Thomas the Great angrily questioned.

"Fiend?" Dipper asked, confused.

"Wait, I thought all you gnomes were friendly with each other!" Mabel claimed, also confused.

"Jeff and his gnomes are Woodland Gnomes. We're Timberland Gnomes!" Thomas the Great exclaimed. "And if you're his friend, that must mean you four are Woodlands!"

Dipper and Mabel exchanged confused looks with one another as they looked around at the surrounding gnomes. The gnomes began angrily shouting various different claims in protest against them, which began to disturb the dragon and make her curious.

"Alright, enough is enough!" Derrick shouted, stepping forward. "This is getting ridiculous, Dipper. Admittedly, I'm impressed by the effort you've put into making all this happen. Getting these little people, the dragon costume, and the acting. It really sells a lot, but I still don't buy it. I know your game and it's over. Now if we can just stop all the screaming and shouting and just go home! This was a huge waste of time!"

Thomas the Great's eye twitched at Derrick's ignorance and walked back beside the dragon. "That's it, I've had enough of this uneducated pest," he said, turning toward the dragon. "Holy Guardian of the Gnomes! Burn this human and his lack of belief!"

"Excuse me?" Derrick asked, before turning toward the roaring dragon turning to face him. The dragon opened its mouth and took a deep breath before unleashing a powerful burst of fire at Derrick. At the same moment, Dipper jumped and tackled him out of the way before the flames could hit either of them.

Derrick's eyes bulged at the sight of the dragon's flaming breath, his expression finally growing fearful and confused. Dipper stood up and pulled Derrick up on his feet again, as he continued to stare on at the ongoing fire.

"D-did that thing j-just…?" Derrick stammered, pointing toward the fire.

"YES!" Dipper yelled out in his face. "That is  _really_ a giant fire-breathing dragon, it  _really_ just tried to kill you, I  _really_ just saved your life, and we are  _really_ surrounded by a bunch of gnomes that are also gonna try to kill us."

"Wait a second," Ryland said, turning toward Mabel. "I thought you said there was no such thing as fire-breathing dragons."

"Um, whoops?" Mabel responded with an innocent shrug. "Guess I was wrong."

A gnome then threw a pinecone spear at Derrick, hitting and piercing him in the knee, causing him to yelp in pain. He pulled out the spear and verified that it had done nothing worse than a bad cut. But he was still caught off guard by the fact the tiny spears were even capable of causing such damage in the first place. It was finally enough to break him.

"Alright! Alright! I give in! I believe you!" Derrick finally admitted as he ran up to Dipper. "Now let's get the hell outta here!"

Derrick tried to make a break for it but was immediately stopped by more gnomes pointing their spears at him again. Dipper scanned the area for an easier escape but found that they were surrounded by nothing but gnomes. Sure, they were giants in comparison to them, but the large number of them was enough for him to realize that it doesn't matter when they're easily outnumbered.

"Kill them all!" Thomas the Great shouted as he watched Derrick's attempt to escape.

The dragon roared again and turned toward the four. Mabel looked up at the dragon and then behind her and noticed the angry gnomes still stood in formation behind them.

"Guys! I have an idea!" Mabel exclaimed, beginning to walk backward toward the gnomes. "Back up!"

"Back up?" Ryland asked, confused about Mabel's plan in the current situation. "You mean back up into the gnomes with the pointy pine cone spears?"

"Just trust me!" Mabel pleaded, continuing to back up closer to the surrounding gnomes. Dipper, Derrick, and Ryland decided to follow through and back up closer to the gnomes behind them as well, prompting the gnomes to ready their spears against the four as they continued to back into them.

"We can't back up anymore! Now what?" Dipper asked.

The dragon roared loudly and began to inhale again, signifying it's about to fire again. Dipper, Derrick, and Ryland looked on in fear, while Mabel stared at the dragon with sheer focus. As the dragon pushed its head forward to exhale, Mabel raised her hand up in alert.

"Now jump away!" Mabel shouted to the three, throwing her body to the right of the dragon's incoming fire expel. Dipper jumped along with her to the right while Ryland and Derrick threw themselves to the left.

The fire aimed at the four was now pushing forward into the wall of gnomes that stood behind the group. The gnomes in front of the fire's way screamed in fear at the approaching flames.

"OUT OF THE WAY!" many of the gnomes shouted in unison as most of the gnomes jumped out of the flame's range, clearing a direct, unguarded path back in the forest once the dragon's fire dissipated, all according to Mabel's plan.

"There's our escape! Now's our chance!" Mabel alerted to the others, pointing to the path.

The four quickly ran through the gap in between the gnomes, which was still covered in embers and smoke from the fire. They pushed back into the forest and began to make their getaway from the Timberland gnomes and their dragon.

"No! They're getting away! How could you let them outsmart you like that?" Thomas the Great shouted angrily at the fallen gnomes. He turned toward the dragon and the other wall of gnomes. "All of you! Chase them down! Don't let them escape!"

The Timberland Gnomes nodded in response to their leader's command and began running through the forest. Some climbed up trees and started leaping their way through the woods. Some built totems on top of each other to gain height advantage as they followed. The Guardian of the Gnomes, on the other hand, leaped forward and spread out its wingspan, roaring loudly before jumping forward into the air and taking off above the forest.

Meanwhile, Dipper, Mabel, Derrick, and Ryland were already running as fast as they could through the forest. The gnomes weren't too far behind, however.

"This is insane!" Derrick shouted while running. "I almost got burnt alive by a damn dragon! And now we're being chased by actual gnomes?! What?!"

"That's what I've been trying to tell you!" Dipper replied back, while also trying to avoid running into the trees ahead. "But you didn't want to believe me and everything I've been telling you about. Even when it was right in front of you."

"I'm sorry! It's just…it all sounded so fake and I didn't think they were actually gnomes!" Derrick called back.

"You called them little people with beards and thought the dragon was a costume!" Mabel chimed in. "Do you try to be a moron or are you just that stupid?"

"Maybe a bit of both," Derrick answered. "Now, do we even know where we're going?"

"I think I do! Follow my lead!" Dipper shouted while sprinting all the way ahead of the four.

"Guys! Up in the trees!" Ryland alerted, pointing up to the trees as he ran.

In the trees above them, gnomes were following closely, leaping from branch to branch. Some had already gotten far enough ahead to start throwing their pine cone spears at them. Some used bow and arrows to fire gnomes at each the four running as well.

"So I assume this is how your first experience with gnomes was when you got kidnapped four years back?" Ryland asked Dipper, avoiding the gnomes being fired at him.

"Huh? Dude, what're you talking about?! I never got kidnapped by gnomes!" Dipper replied as he ran. "That was Mabel!"

"Wait, what?" Ryland questioned. He looked back at her in confusion, who tried to avoid his glance as she ran. "But she told me it was you who got kidnapped!"

"Is this really the right time to be talking about all this?" Mabel asked awkwardly as they kept running.

"I don't know. I wouldn't mind seeing this conversation keep going," Derrick chimed in, grinning at Mabel.

"And I wouldn't mind seeing you become dragon food," Mabel struck back.

"Speaking of dragons," Dipper alerted, pointing above. The dragon soared into plain view of the sky. They were running through trees and weren't in an open enough space, so the dragon couldn't accurately target them.

"Mabel, maybe you can use your dragon-taming skills and we can turn that dragon on them!" Ryland suggested.

"Uhh, well…" Mabel stuttered, trying to think of how to reply.

"Wait, you know how to tame dragons?" Dipper asked her suspiciously. "Since when? This is the first time we've ever encountered a dragon!"

"I thought you used a dragon to defeat these guys the first time you fought them?" Ryland asked.

"A dragon?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow. "No! We used a leaf blower!"

"A leaf blower?" Ryland repeated, turning toward Mabel suspiciously.

"Mabel, what the hell have you been telling him?" Dipped asked as she turned back toward her. Mabel looked incredibly stressed by the ongoing conversation and didn't even have a means of trying to respond, knowing the hole she had dug herself in.

As he kept running, Dipper looked ahead and gasped. The four stopped in their tracks as they came face to face with a cliffside. Stuck at a dead end, they began to look at their surroundings.

"What happened?!" Derrick asked, confused by the fact that they were stuck at a dead end. "I thought we were running in the direction we came from?!"

"We must've taken a wrong turn on our way back," Dipper assumed. "C'mon, let's run back!"

The four took a few steps back but were stopped as the dragon landed right in front of them and roared loudly. Out of the surrounding woods came waves of Timberland Gnomes, pointing their bows and spears at the four as they marched toward them. Coming right behind the dragon was Thomas the Great who had his own weapon: a pine cone trident. He aimed it directly at the four, who were surrounded once again.

"It's over!" Thomas the Great shouted at the group. "You four have nowhere left to run! We have you cornered! Now you will meet your end!"

"Is it too late to apologize for not believing?" Derrick asked him, shrugging his arms up awkwardly with a fake smile.

"Far too late, human," Thomas the Great answered. "Now, Holy Guardian of the Gnomes, burn these insufferable humans!"

The dragon roared once more in response. The four grouped up again once another and prepared for their upcoming fate.

"So let me get this straight," Ryland began as he looked over at Mabel. "You have absolutely no idea how to tame dragons and everything you told me today was made-up?"

"Not everything," Mabel corrected. "My name is still Mabel." She laughed awkwardly as he looked back at him. He looked unamused, but not particularly angry either. Mabel looked away, knowing well that it wasn't the right moment to crack jokes.

"So this is it?" Derrick asked in disbelief. "Is this seriously how it ends?"

"I guess so," Dipper replied calmly. He looked over at Mabel, "Mabel, you were an amazing sister. I couldn't ask for another person to be my twin."

Mabel glanced over at Dipper and smiled. "Right back at you two, bro-bro."

Derrick looked at Dipper and sighed. "Well man, if this is the end, then I wanna say thanks for being an awesome friend while it lasted. Sorry for not believing you about all this Gravity Falls weirdness, though."

Dipper smiled. "Hey, it's cool man." His smile suddenly turned into a frown, "But I'm still not gonna let go of how stupid you were today."

"I mean, we're about to die, so that's all cool with me," Derrick replied. He looked over at Mabel and grinned. "And Sparkles, I don't think you're all that bad."

"I hate you," Mabel replied immediately, not even making eye contact with him.

"Yeah, I hate you too," Derrick corrected. "I was just lying to make this an effective last moment for all of us, but if you're gonna be that way then I guess it's not worth it."

"Well, I kind of just met all of you," Ryland finally entered in on the goodbyes. "But, you know, it's been fun. For the most part.

Thomas the Great walked forward and intervened the moment. "Aww, what a touching moment this is!" he exclaimed as he folded his hands together, looking at the four dreamily. He reverted back to his sinister look and grabbed his trident again, turning back toward the dragon. "Now that it's over, BURN THEM!"

The dragon began to inhale once more, building up its fire. The group huddled close together once more. Everyone but Dipper shut their eyes in preparation for their fate, while Dipper just watched.

"ATTACK!" a voice boomed.

At that moment, a giant net was thrown from the top of the cliff and caught the dragon. The dragon shrieked and roared, trying to free itself from the thick net, but ended up falling over on its side, trapping itself even further.

Mabel, Derrick, and Ryland opened their eyes to watch the events unfold. Blue sleeved gnomes came soaring down from above and tackled the red sleeved Timberland Gnomes. More blue sleeved gnomes ambushed them from behind within the trees as well. The red sleeved gnomes and blue sleeved gnomes clashed together in multiple different fights. The blue sleeved gnomes clearly caught the red sleeved gnomes off guard and were able to prosper in the ongoing battle.

A single gnome hopped down in front of Thomas the Great, causing him to gasp.

"Well, lookie here," the gnome said as he stood before Thomas. "If it isn't Thomas the Great, leader of the Timberland Gnomes."

"Jeff! I should've known these humans were leading us into your trap!" Thomas the Great scolded, clenching his fist.

"Even with their help, I feel like your stupidity might've played the biggest role in the fall of your Timberland Gnomes and your defeat in the Great Gnome War!" Jeff the Gnome replied with a smug look on his face.

"Defeat? I haven't been defeated yet, you clueless barbarian. My Timberland Gnomes are…uh…" Thomas stopped when he looked around at all his gnomes, each one having been defeated by a blue sleeved gnome.

"…all beaten by my Woodland Gnomes," Jeff finished. "Face it, Thomas. You're finished! Now surrender your territory!"

Thomas the Great glanced around at his fallen faction sadly before angrily turning toward Jeff. He pointed his pinecone trident at him. "I won't go down without a fight!"

Jeff immediately placed two fingers in his mouth and whistled. On cue, his army of Woodland Gnomes surrounded Thomas the Great, pointing their own pine cone spears at him. Heavily outnumbered, Thomas unenthusiastically dropped his trident.

"Alright, Jeff," Thomas replied, raising his arms up in defeat. "I surrender the Timberland territory back to you. The Woodland Gnomes are victorious."

"That's right!" Jeff celebrated. "We did it, boys! The forest is ours again!"

"Shmebulock!" Shmebulock cheered as the Woodland Gnomes raised their spears and celebrated their victory.

Having witnessed the whole event unfold, Dipper, Mabel, Derrick, and Ryland finally got up from their former position. Mabel, Derrick, and Ryland all exchanged confused looks with one another while Dipper walked up to Jeff.

Jeff turned around to Dipper and instantly recognized him. He smiled and offered his hand to shake. "Ah-hah, my good friend! Thanks for your help!"

"Of course, man," Dipper said as he shook Jeff's hand. "So does this mean your war is over?"

"Yep! Although there's gonna be a lot of cleaning up these next few days. It's going to be a busy few weeks to shape up the Gnome Union again." Jeff explained as he watched his Woodland Gnomes take Thomas and the defeated Timberland Gnomes as prisoners. "There's probably gonna be an election for gnome president soon and trust me when I say gnome politics are the worst."

"I guess you won't be running then?" Dipper assumed.

"Oh no, I'm totally running," Jeff clarified. "Another opportunity to run and control the whole colony again at the cost of filling out paperwork and taking pictures of me kissing babies? Only a small price to pay!"

" _EH-HEM!_ " Mabel intervened. Dipper and Jeff turned toward her, Ryland, and Derrick, who all looked equally confused at what was happening. "I hate to interrupt, but do you wanna explain what the heck just happened?"

"Mabel Pines," Jeff called out flirtatiously, taking off his hat and brushing his hand over his hair. "It's been awhile. You've certainly grown too."

"It's still not happening, shortcake," Mabel cut off, crossing her arms in disgust. She looked at Dipper. "What just happened? You planned all of this?"

"Yeah, it's a bit of a long story," Dipper said, rubbing the back of his head as he tried to recall the day's events. "Earlier today when I was showing Derrick around the town, I snuck away and met up with Jeff for a bit, who filled me on the Great Gnome War that's was going on between his faction, the Woodland Gnomes, and the other faction, the Timberlands."

"So when you said you were taking a thirty-minute bathroom break, you were actually outside in the woods talking politics with a gnome?" Derrick asked, recalling the event earlier in the day.

"I mean, I guess you can put it that way," Dipper said, shrugging. "Anyways, I met up with Jeff because I needed a big way to convince Derrick of the weirdness of Gravity Falls. I knew Derrick was too stubborn and wouldn't give in if I had just shown him a gnome. For example, calling them little people with beards…"

Jeff shook his head disapprovingly at Derrick. "You know how many hit lists you may have just gotten yourself on for saying that? You better watch your mouth around these parts." Derrick rubbed the back of his head awkwardly.

"So after that, Jeff pointed me toward the Timberland Gnomes, telling me they had a dragon and that'd give Derrick the scare needed to convince him that the weirdness is legitimate," Dipper continued to explain. "Then we devised a plan on how to connect my goals of convincing Derrick to his goal of defeating the Thomas and the Timberlands. So I put on a bit of a facade when we got back to the Shack and led you guys to the Timberland's territory to purposefully aggravate them."

"And when we were running back and you said we missed a turn, it was actually you purposefully leading us into Jeff's planned trap!" Ryland exclaimed, realizing Dipper's plan.

"You got it," Dipper said as he nodded toward Ryland.

"Wow. So you went through all these lengths just to give me a scare by having a dragon almost burn me alive," Derrick said, in somewhat disbelief. "That's hardcore."

"Actually, the scare was just supposed to be the fact that there was a giant dragon, but you still didn't believe it," Dipper clarified. "You actually almost died when the dragon blasted fire at you."

Derrick stood stunned for a moment and didn't know how to respond now that he knew that the moment they were discussing truly was the result of his own stupidity. "Well, that's just...great."

"Yeah...but everything else was planned out," Dipper assured.

"But wait, you were also in on all of the goodbyes when we thought we were going to die just now," Ryland added.

"I faked it," Dipper answered, smiling. "Plus, it bought us a bit more time for Jeff and his gnomes to show up."

"So that part about me being an amazing sister wasn't true?" Mabel asked, folding her arms suspiciously.

"It was true," Dipper reassured her, chuckling. "But, I thought you already knew that part already."

"Aww, you," Mabel said as she lovingly punched him in the arm.

"Anyways, now that the Gnome Civil War is over, I reign supreme again!" Jeff cheered. "For defeating Thomas, I now own the name Sir Jeff the Great! I shall have a statue built in my honor. But first, I command a celebratory squirrel bath!" He looked back over at the four. "And I'm willing to supply you four with one too for your assistance."

"No thanks," Dipper answered.

"I'm good," Mabel replied in disgust.

"Not a chance," Derrick denied.

"I'd rather not, bro," Ryland said.

* * *

The sun was setting and dusk was nearing as Dipper, Mabel, Derrick, and Ryland found themselves finally returning to the Mystery Shack, still exhausted from the ample amount of walking and running they had done that day. Dipper leaned himself against Soos' pick up truck and let out an exhausted sigh.

"Well, that was a fun experience," Mabel stated in an enthusiastic, yet equally sarcastic tone.

"Just like old times, sis. Just like old times," Dipper agreed, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

"I'm kinda stuck in the middle of thinking the whole thing was awesome and just being traumatized," Ryland admitted.

"Speak for yourself. My stupidity almost got me burnt alive. I'm nothing but traumatized," Derrick told him.

"Look on the bright side," Mabel began cheerfully. "At least you finally acknowledge how stupid you are."

"Ha-ha," Derrick sarcastically laughed as he began to walk away from the Shack. "I'm gonna head back to my place and cry myself asleep. I'll catch you all later."

"See you around, Derrick," Dipper waved as he yawned. He stretched his legs out slightly before walking over toward the porch of the Mystery Shack. "Well, my legs are destroyed so I'm gonna head inside and lie down before I lose the ability to stand."

"Alright, Noodle Legs," Mabel jabbed.

Dipper opened the door and went inside, leaving her alone with Ryland outside. She glanced over at him and caught him trying to sneak a glance at her. She knows he's thinking about what had happened earlier and how she had lied to him. Looking back, she feels regretful of lying at all in the first place. She knew Wendy was right and that she should've just told the truth from the beginning. Rather than simply telling Ryland some of her flawed past experiences, she lied and revealed an even greater flaw to him that she could've avoided in the first place.

"So, uh…" Mabel started, finally breaking the silence.

"So, uh…" Ryland repeated.

"Listen, Ryland," she began. "I'm really sorry for lying to you about knowing how to tame dragons and changing the original story about the gnomes."

"What was the original story?" Ryland asked, showing genuine curiosity.

Mabel hesitated to answer at first but decided against herself. "When I was twelve, I went through a bit of a boy-crazy phase and was constantly trying to chase a summer romance. I met a guy named Norman at the beginning of that summer and I pretty much immediately started dating him. After a little while, it turned out Norman was actually a bunch of gnomes who were just looking for a queen, and when I said no, they kidnapped me."

"So basically what you said had happened to Dipper actually happened to you?" Ryland asked, leaning against Soos' pickup.

"Pretty much," Mabel confirmed. "Dipper's actually the one who saved me and even warned me in the first place that Norman was suspicious, although he was wrong when he thought Norman was a zombie. But I pushed him away and got myself into a mess I could've avoided had I listened to him."

"And you guys really beat the gnomes with a leaf blower instead of a dragon?" Ryland asked, to which Mabel simply nodded in response. He looked forward with a neutral expression on his face, not really sure what to make of things. He then looked back at her. "Why would you lie to me about all this?"

Mabel sighed. "I don't know. Because I was scared you'd think me telling you this would make you think I'm some terrible, flawed person who can't do anything right."

"What?" Ryland chuckled. "Mabel, you were twelve. Why would you think I'd judge you based on something that happened when you were a kid? You know what happened when I was a kid?" He rolled up his right sleeve again and unveiled the BMX scar he had shown her earlier. "I got this when I was twelve. Yet you praised me earlier today when I pulled off the same trick that got me this in the first place."

Mabel looked on at the scar and understood what he meant. He rolled up his sleeve and smiled at her.

"We're all flawed when we're young, Mabel. And even though we change as we get older, that doesn't mean we should be ashamed of our pasts," Ryland told her. "If anything, it's something to look back and laugh about. Like what an idiot I was to get that frickin' huge scar in the first place!"

The two started laughing together. Mabel looked at Ryland as she laughed and noticed that he genuinely humored by his past. She thought about her past again and smiled.

"Yeah, or how stupid I was to have gone out with a bunch of gnomes!" she exclaimed as she burst out laughing. Ryland burst out laughing again along with her.

"See?" Ryland said as he calmed himself down. "We're both laughing at ourselves."

"Yeah," Mabel agreed as her face displayed guilt once again. "Wow, I feel so bad for lying to you. It really was a pointless thing to do."

Ryland shrugged carelessly with a calm smile. "Don't stress it. It's whatever."

"If you say so," Mabel settled hesitantly. "So what now?"

"Well, my shift's over, so usually I'd go home," Ryland told her. "But going home sounds a bit too tame for me right now after everything we've gone through today."

"Yeah, me too," Mabel agreed. "I'm also starving, but I'm also feeling too picky to eat microwaved frozen food, which is about all we eat at the Shack. For some reason, I'm craving movie theater popcorn. And a series binge of Ducktective."

"Ducktective, eh?" Ryland asked with a smirk. "Didn't they just release the new movie 'The Constable Strikes Back' yesterday?"

"The sequel to 'A New Quack'? Yes!" Mabel exclaimed excitedly. "I would've seen it last night if it wasn't the day we were coming back from Piedmont."

"Why don't we just go check it out now?" Ryland offered. "It's only six o'clock and the next showing is in forty-five minutes."

Mabel felt as though her heart skipped a beat as she processed the question. "Go to the movies? Now?"

"It's a Sunday night at the beginning of summer vacation," Ryland laid out. "I don't see why not."

Mabel felt her face redden as she let herself slip into a dreamy smile as she looked on at him. "I'd love to."

Ryland smiled warmly back at her as the two began to walk down the path that led outside the Shack's lot and would take them into town. The sun soon began to disappear into the night, allowing the full moon to shine brightly among the shimmering stars of the night.

* * *

_June 5th, 2016_

_Today was...interesting, to say the least._

_For starters, my best friend from Piedmont, Derrick Mendez, was coincidentally sent here to Gravity Falls for the summer. His dad sent him to stay with his granddad because he had done something really bad. He refuses to tell me what exactly, which is sort of frustrating._

_But nonetheless, I'm glad he's here to spend the summer. As I said before, he's my best friend. We've been friends since eighth grade after he saved me from a bully at school. I've been able to look over most of his criminal nature and background (which he has a quite a bit of, by the way) and it's helped me look up to him as a great friend. However, he never believed me when I had talked to him about Gravity Falls weirdness, but I'll get into that more in a second._

_He doesn't get along all that great with my sister, Mabel. They can't stand one another and it's all because he spilled soda on her and they both responded childishly to it. It's probably the dumbest case of two people hating each other that I've ever witnessed._

_Anyways, I ran into Derrick today as he was robbing bread from Richard Dalton's (owner of Tons) store. Despite knowing Derrick's history with this type of behavior, I felt much more connected with Gravity Falls to allow him to bring those same actions here. I had to call him out and remind him that he's not in Piedmont, and surprisingly, he agreed and admitted that he was in need of a change of behavior and was willing to try to fix himself._

_After that, we drove around town (Did I mention that Soos is letting me borrow his pickup truck when I like?) and I showed him some different weird places around town. About halfway through giving him a tour of the town, I ran into Jeff the Gnome, who informed me of a big war going on between his faction (Woodlands) and a rebelling gnome faction (Timberlands). I had told him beforehand that I was looking for a way to really shock Derrick and make him believe in Gravity Falls weirdness, knowing how stubborn he is. We then came up with a plan where I would take Derrick to the Timberlands and provoke them into sending out their fire-breathing dragon, to which we would then lead them toward the Woodland territory, where Jeff would have a surprise attack prepared._

_So the plan went into action later that day, with Mabel and Ryland (an acquaintance and worker at the Shack) joining along. Luckily, everything went according to plan! Although Derrick was a bit more stubborn than I thought and wasn't even buying the dragon at first until I saved him from getting burnt alive. But things ended up working out for Jeff and I. He ended the gnome war, while I finally convinced Derrick that Gravity Falls weirdness was real! That feels great after spending the last four years trying to convince him._

_The only other weird thing today was that Mabel has been telling Ryland that she knows how to tame dragons and that I was the one who got kidnapped by gnomes four years ago when it was actually her. I'm gonna have to have a talk with her about it later when she gets back from the movies, but I'm pretty sure she's got some sorta thing him. That's all fine and dandy with me as long as she isn't making stuff up about me to him. Nonetheless, I hope it works out for them because he works here at the Shack, and if things go south between them, I'd expect a whole lotta awkward going on around here..._

* * *

 

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	9. The Gossiper: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trouble awaits when the twins learn that they may lose the Mystery Shack.

Soos wore his pajamas as he stood in the bathroom brushing his teeth for the night. He hummed a tune as he rhythmically brushed around the inside of his mouth. He spat in the sink and promptly rinsed his mouth with a cup of water that sat beside the faucet. After spitting the water out, he looked directly at his reflection in the mirror and smiled.

"Your smile is on point, Mr. Mystery," Soos complimented himself with a smug look.

He walked out of the bathroom and stepped across the hall into his bedroom. He spotted Melody at their desk, looking through and filling out various papers.

"Going to sleep soon, babe?" Soos asked as he slipped under the covers of their bed, looking at her flirtatiously. "Or are you feeling like going nuts tonight?" He then pulled out a video game that read 'Lario Wagon 8' on it. "Because I'm feeling like pulling another all-night Lario Wagon session! The crazy part being that we play on the hardest track: Rainbow Lane. And I call dibs on Broshi!"

Melody glanced over at Soos and the game. "Oh, not tonight, honey. I gotta fill out this paperwork for the Shack."

"Again?" Soos asked, putting the game down disappointedly. "This is, like, the third night in a row! Is it because I keep calling Broshi? Fine, I'll let you have him this time but if you start being cheap with the shells again, I can't promise I'll be able to keep my cool."

"No, I don't care about Broshi, even though he's obviously the best character," Melody told him as she turned back to her papers. "It's just that work needs to get done. I need to make sure we're going to be able to pay off this month's mortgage. This would usually be the last year for us to pay it, but the refinances set us back. And the recent sales drops that the Shack has been having might be a problem for us."

"Sales drops?" Soos questioned as got out of bed and walked over to Melody. "What do you mean? The tours have been doing great!"

"Merch hasn't been though," Melody told him with a concerned look. She grabbed a sheet of paper displaying a line graph and presented it to him. The graph displayed a steady arrow that has remained steady and high in the beginning and middle but begins to plummet around the end. "This graph shows the amount of money made from selling merch in the gift shop. We've always had consistent sales in merch until about March where they began to slowly decrease. However, sales had only just taken a huge hit about a week ago."

Soos looked at the graph in shock. "But...but how?"

"I'm not sure," Melody admitted as she placed the graph down. She picked up another graph and showed it to him. "But here's the money that's been made from selling tours of the Shack. It's been more consistent than the merch sales, but it's also been on its own recent decline. The hardest hit would have to be the merch sales though. And based on these estimates, we might have a tough time getting the money we need to pay off this month's mortgage."

"Oh," Soos said disappointedly. He then worked up a slight smile. "Well, it's no big deal. We just have to pay off a late fee, right? We'll just do a better job trying to sell merchandise. Or better yet, take Stan's advice! 'When business is low and there are no suffices, just put on a smile and raise the prices!'"

"Soos, there is no late fee," Melody told him candidly. "Since we never officially transferred ownership of the Shack after moving in, we're still paying under Stan's name."

"So?" Soos asked, not seeing the issue.

"So they think Stan is still paying the Shack's mortgage," Melody began. She leaned forward and grabbed a rolled-up sheet of paper from across the table. "And after over thirty years of history with him, they, uh, kind of hate him…" She then unrolled the paper and scanned it. "Some of the most recent incidents under his name would be the Summer of 2012, where the bank lists that the Shack has been through an 'accident may or may not involving a wrecking ball', a 'giant woodpecker attack', and, um, a 'there is a totally not a portal underneath the house' accident..."

"Hey, I remember coming up with that name for Stan!" Soos gleefully realized. "At the time, he told me that it was the worst name of all time. Guess he had changed his mind."

"Yeah, well, because all of those incidents happened in one summer and with the number of times Stan called for refinancing, they think he's unfit to own any sort of property," Melody explained. "And because we're still under his name, it means all of those incidents are on us or 'Stan'. And if 'Stan' doesn't pay the mortgage, then instead of getting a simple late fee, 'Stan' is going to get foreclosed."

Soos stared at her blankly in silence for a moment. "So Stan is going to get foreclosed? That's terrible! We need to do something about it."

Melody stared back at Soos blankly for a moment before letting out a deep sigh. "Alright, I guess I could've explained that better. Honey, to put it simply, if we don't get enough money to pay off this month's mortgage, we're going to lose the Shack."

Soos' face then immediately displayed a look of shock. He began to feel a bit dizzy, so he sat down on the bed as he rubbed the side of his head, processing the situation. There was nothing about the thought of losing the Shack that sat well with him. "Aw man."

Melody looked at his distressed look with concern. "I'm sorry, baby. But we're really gonna need to figure out how to increase sales in the coming week and fast because it's not looking all that great right now. And I don't even want to think about how Dipper and Mabel would feel if they heard the Shack was shutting down."

Soos agreed. Dipper and Mabel have only just gotten to Gravity Falls. The summer had merely just begun. Sending them back so early because he was struggling to pay for the Shack would destroy them. "Well, the Shack isn't getting shut down!" he stated as he confidently stood up from the bed. "Don't worry! I have a plan on what to do to get business going around here again."

"Really?" Melody asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Absolutely!" Soos assured her as he walked back over to the bed. "I'm going to make things right again. You've been working so hard on all these financial problems behind the scenes while all I do is put on a costume and play a character. Let me handle this situation. For you, for Abuelita, and for Dipper and Mabel." He walked over to the other side of the bed and placed himself underneath the sheets and looked back over at her. "We'll be out of this in no time. Trust me."

Melody smiled fervently at his words. "Well, it's not like you've ever given me a reason not to trust you." Soos smiled warmly at her, feeling complacent inside. She turned herself back toward the table and documents. "Good night, honey."

"Good night, babe," Soos said as he turned over on his side away from Melody, shutting his eyes. After a brief moment, he opened his eyes again and stared forward at the wall in front of him.

He thought for a second as his face began to display a look of concern and guilt. Despite what he had just told Melody, he actually didn't have any idea on how to increase business. But he felt as though he wasn't contributing to the Shack nearly as much as Melody has been and felt guilty about it. He was Mr. Mystery. And it was up to him to honor that name and make as much money as he possibly could. If they were actually in a position of struggling to do that, then he must've been doing something wrong. Now, he has to make things right before it's too late.

"We'll be out of this in no time..." he whispered to himself, but remained unsure.

* * *

"Hi, I'm Bobby Renzobbi!" Bobby shouted enthusiastically. "Are you tired of forgetting to get your grandma a birthday present? Well, you need to get the Handy Dandy Granny Fanny Pack!"

It was a Tuesday morning and Dipper and Mabel were sat in the living room watching TV, bored as can be. Dipper sat slumped to the side, head leaning against his raised fist on the armrest. Mabel laid down on her back on the floor, essentially watching the screen upside down.

"Grannies love the Handy Dandy Granny Fanny Pack!" Bobby voiced over an elderly woman wearing the Handy Dandy Granny Fanny Pack on her waist appeared on the screen.

"I love the Handy Dandy Granny Fanny Pack!" the woman said as she gave a thumbs up to the screen.

"Believe me when I say that there's no birthday present your granny would love more than the Handy Dandy Granny Fanny Pack!" Bobby said as the camera panned back to him. He held a Handy Dandy Granny Fanny Pack in his hands and pointed it toward the screen. "Call the number on the screen and order the Handy Dandy Granny Fanny Pack now and we'll throw in a second Handy Dandy Granny Fanny Pack for free! You can give it to your other granny for her birthday! Or give it to a friend's granny for  _her_ birthday! Or give it to your neighbor's granny for  _her_ birthday!  _IT'S THE HANDY DANDY GRANNY FANNY PACK!_ "

Dipper grabbed the remote and shut off the TV. He sighed loudly as he slumped back in his chair, expressing his complete and utter boredom. "Man, there's just nothing good on."

"Duh," Mabel said as she rolled around on the carpet freely so to somewhat alleviate her boredom. "Everyone knows they never air the good shows on weekdays."

"Yeah, but this is just a whole new level of boring. And there's nothing even interesting going on around town that's worth checking out," Dipper said as he slumped himself further into his seat. "There's gotta be something better for us to do than sit around all day."

Mabel sat up as a thought came to mind. "Let's go see what Soos is up to!"

Dipper considered the idea for a moment, before casually shrugging as he got up from his seat. "Alright."

Mabel threw herself off the ground and followed behind him as the two began making their way from the living room toward Soos and Melody's bedroom, which formerly used to be Ford's room, which actually used to be Soos' break room before Ford himself returned. Admittedly, in the few days that they've been in Gravity Falls since arriving, neither of them have spent all that much time with Soos. They've been doing their own separate things for the most part, which was a crime considering one of the main factors contributing to their original want to return to Gravity Falls in the first place was to see their friends again. Considering the Shack was closed for the day, it felt like a good time as ever for the two to actually spend time finally catching up with Soos.

The two reached his bedroom door, which had an open crack in it. Before they walked in, they heard nervous mumbling coming from inside from Soos himself. Dipper and Mabel glanced at one another with inquisitive looks. They looked inside quietly and saw Soos nervously pacing around the room with a paper in his hands.

"Think, Soos. Think," he told himself. "There's gotta be a way to make a lot of money. What would Stan do if he was low on money?" He stopped pacing for a moment and stood still in the center of the room to think. He smiled brightly as an idea suddenly came to mind. "I know! He would rob something! I gotta go find that heist gear he left for me!"

Soos then turned toward the door and began to quickly walk up to it. He placed his hand on the knob and pulled the door back, allowing him to immediately catch sight of Dipper and Mabel standing at the doorway, looking at him with suspicion.

"AH!" Soos screamed, startled enough to fall on the floor. As soon as he processed the fact that it was the twins, he put on a nervous smile. "Oh, uh, hey dudes! What's up? And, uh, how long were you two standing there?"

Dipper crossed his arms. "Long enough to hear what we needed to."

"Soos, you're planning to rob from someone?" Mabel asked with unease.

"What? No!" Soos denied, standing up from the floor. "I wasn't planning on robbing from anyone! I was thinking more along the lines of robbing from  _somewhere_. Ya know, like a bank or store or...something."

Mabel crossed her arms disappointedly at Soos. Dipper stepped forward a bit more toward Soos. "Soos, we heard you say that you were looking for a way to make money. What do you need money for that requires you going to the lengths of robbing?"

Soos sighed guiltily. "There's no point in lying to you guys. Dudes, I have some really bad news."

Mabel gasped. "You didn't forget to get Abuelita a birthday gift, did you?"

Soos suddenly gasped in fear. "It's not today, is it?"

"No, I'm just asking if you forgot," Mabel clarified.

"Oh,  _phew_ ," Soos let out a sigh of relief as he wiped a drop of sweat from his forehead. "Had me worried there for a sec. But no, it's not  _that_ bad. It's more along the lines of 'We Might Lose the Shack' bad."

"WHAT?!" Dipper and Mabel exclaimed in shock.

"Wait, are you also implying that forgetting to get Abuelita a birthday gift is worse than losing the Shack?" Dipper curiously asked, branching off from the main subject.

"Dipper, that's not the point," Mabel intervened. She turned back toward Soos. "Soos, what do you mean we might lose the Shack?"

"Well, Melody put it in a pretty confusing way," Soos said, trying to recall how Melody explained it to him. "But, like, the bank doesn't like Stan, and we're paying for the Shack under Stan's name, so the bank doesn't like us. And so all of the trouble Stan got into is now under our name, and so if we miss on a payment on the Shack, we're going to be foreclosed or something like that. And that's kinda-sorta really likely since we're not making all that much money this month."

"That's terrible! You can't lose the Shack!" Mabel exclaimed worriedly. "There's gotta be something we can do about this."

"That's what I'm trying to figure out, dude," Soos told her. He sat down on the bed. "I told Melody I had a plan to get this place going again, but the truth is: I got nothing. I don't know how I'm possibly going to get out of this one."

Dipper thought for a moment, recalling something that could come into play. "Wait, how are you and Melody are still under Stan's name? Don't you guys have the deed to the Mystery Shack?"

"Yeah!" Mabel exclaimed as she also began to remember the Shack's deed and the lengths that Gideon had gone to get it before, including spawning Bill Cipher. "And the Gravity Falls 'Finders Keepers' law, which I can't believe still exists, says if you hold the deed, you own the place!"

"Exactly!" Dipper said enthusiastically. "So if you show the bank that you have the physical deed to the Shack, then you won't be under Stan's name anymore and you won't get foreclosed for being under his name!"

"But are you sure it works like that?" Mabel asked curiously.

"That's what it says according to the official Gravity Falls Law Book," Dipper says, pulling the law book out from his hoodie.

"Gravity Falls has an official law book?" Mabel asked as she got closer to see the book.

"Where else would they keep track of laws as absurd as the 'Finders Keepers' law?" Dipper questioned her as he flipped through the book. Upon landing on a certain page, he pointed out a section to her. "Ah-hah! See? The 'Naa-Nana-Naa-Na, You Can't Catch Me' Law says that if a new property owner presents the deed to their property to the bank immediately before foreclosure under a previous owner's name, they can save their property under their own name!"

"That's great!" Mabel cheered excitedly. "Also, the worst name for a law ever."

"Agreed," Dipper nodded as he closed the law book. "But hey, at least all Soos has to do now is show the bank he has the deed and we're in the clear!"

Soos stared at the two as he remembered the deed. "Uh, yeah! The, uh...the deed!" He looked around nervously. "I most likely have it!"

Dipper and Mabel's uplifted faces degraded to ones of near-horror, as their eyes bulged at Soos' unsure nature of knowing whether he has the deed or not.

"Soos, you  _did not_  lose the deed, did you?" Dipper asked worriedly.

"No!" Soos assured as he got up from the bed and began searching around the room frantically, looking inside drawers, amongst the shelves, and under his bed. "It's around here somewhere!"

"Here in your room?" Mabel asked.

Soos sighed with guilt as he kept searching. "Here in the Shack…" Dipper facepalmed himself while Mabel stared forward at Soos in pure horror.

"Alright, alright," Mabel said calmly as she stepped forward. "No need to panic yet. Nothing a simple retrace of steps can't fix. Soos, when was the last time you remember having the deed and where were you?"

Soos stopped searching and sat back down on the bed in front of the twins. He thought about it for a moment, trying his hardest to retrace his steps. Suddenly, an idea hit him. "Oh, I remember! I was watching TV!"

"The living room!" Mabel exclaimed with a smile. "You see? There we go! C'mon, let's go sear-"

"Wait, wait," Soos halted as he continued to retrace his steps. "It might've been when I was making a sandwich, actually."

Mabel looked unsure for a moment, before settling on it. "Alright, so the kitchen then. Let's go-"

"No, it wasn't in the kitchen," Soos stopped again. "I was making the sandwich in the bathroom."

Dipper and Mabel glanced at one another with weird looks. Dipper turned back toward Soos. "Why were you making a sandwich in the bathroom?"

"Multi-tasking, dude," Soos explained.

"Alright, fine," Mabel settled again, ignoring the topic. "Let's go check the bathroom."

"Actually, wait," Soos halted once again. "It might've been the other time I made a sandwich.  _That_ time it was in the kitchen. Or was it when I went to Yumberjacks?"

"Alright, it's clear that retracing steps isn't going to do any good here," Mabel admitted, glancing over at Dipper.

"Soos, why don't you just hang here at the Shack and search the place for the deed while Mabel and I come up with a way to bring in more customers?" Dipper suggested.

"Yeah!" Mabel agreed. "You obviously have a better idea of where it is than we do...even if that's not saying too much."

"And the way it seems, there's at least a ninety percent chance that the deed is even here," Dipper explained. "At least in the event that the deed just can't be found, Mabel and I will have already begun working on our only other solution."

"And if that doesn't work either, then we'll rob a bank!" Mabel suggested enthusiastically.

Dipper glared blankly at Mabel for a moment. "We'll...just cross that path when we come to it."

Soos smiled tenderly at the two. "You two would help me after I dug us in this hole in the first place?"

"You're like family to us, Soos," Dipper said with a smile.

"Yeah! Even when we make mistakes so bad that we wanna punch each other in the face, we still love each other in the end!" Mabel claimed while making a punching motion. "We just love each other with black eyes!"

"Thanks, dudes," Soos said with a chuckle. "Just do me one favor- please don't tell Melody about any of this. Trust me, I've seen her get angry during Lario Wagon sessions. I really don't want to see how she reacts if she finds out about all this."

Dipper and Mabel nodded at Soos as they both used their hands to make a zipping motion on their lips, assuring him they'll keep their mouths shut. They then quietly walked out of the room and shut the bedroom door behind them, leaving Soos on his own to continue scavenging the Shack for the deed.

Soos stood up from the bed and looked around the room. "Alright then. It looks like it's up to Mr. Mystery to solve this mystery. I'm coming for you... _deed!_ " He suddenly noticed a nacho chip on the floor and excitedly picked it up. "Hey, I was wondering where this went!" He then tossed the nacho into his mouth and ate it. He made a noise of delight as he crunched on the chip.

" _Mmmm_ , yep. That is old."

* * *

Later that morning, Dipper and Mabel walked in the center of town up to a mini-mart on the street corner. They watched as several different townsfolk roamed the streets, going in and out of different stores and buildings. The twins stood confidently as they held Mystery Shack flyers in hand.

"Alright, so here's the plan," Dipper began as he glanced over at Mabel. "I'll go around town posting these flyers up on walls and buildings while you stay here on this corner and advertise with a more direct approach."

"Direct approach!" Mabel repeated. "Got it!" She then began to think about their strategy a bit more in depth. "But I was just wondering, Dipper. Is advertising the Shack more really gonna help improve business?"

"Of course," Dipper assured her. "The one thing I've noticed in the few days we've been back is that there's nothing advertising the Shack in town. Grunkle Stan was always trying to find ways to advertise and bring business in when he was in charge. I mean, one of the first things Grunkle Stan made me do when we first came to Gravity Falls was put up signs for the place. Soos just isn't as strong as an advertiser as Stan was." He walked up to the wall of mini-mart and stapled a flyer to it before turning back to Mabel. "We just gotta think like Stan and get up in people's faces with these ads."

"Get up in people's faces," Mabel restated. "Got it!" She looked around at the townsfolk walking around and some of the familiar faces of citizens she's seen four years before. "Wow! I can't believe how many people I recognize from before! You think they'll recognize us?"

"Maybe," Dipper thought as he looked around at the townsfolk as well. "But that does remind me- when I went to Tons, the owner actually recognized me because of Weirdmageddon. He even thought I was kind of famous."

Mabel snickered. "You? Famous?  _Pffft!_ "

Dipper rolled his eyes in response. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. My point is, maybe we can use our name as a way to endorse the Shack when advertising. Who knows? It might rally up more customers because we're recognizable."

"Sure thing, Mr. Famous," Mabel poked. Dipper sighed in slight annoyance at Mabel's remarks as he walked off to go advertise around town. Mabel stayed back by the mini-mart as planned and readied up her flyers. She looked around at passing townsfolk, preparing herself to approach someone.

Eventually, she spotted Rosanna and Reginald happily walking down the sidewalk together pushing a baby stroller. The sight of their happiness made her feel great, as she knew they were still just planning on getting married last time she saw them. To see how far they've come after so long brought a feeling of warmth inside her. She didn't know them as well as most townsfolk, but she felt they were still very approachable.

"Rosanna! Regy!" she greeted as she approached them enthusiastically, causing them to stop their stroller right in front of her. The couple then looked at her with confused expressions on their faces.

"Do we know you?" Reginald asked, scratching his head.

"It's me, Mabel Pines!" Mabel reminded as she spread her arms out happily. "The girl who used to wear braces but still had the world's greatest smile? Not that I've lost it, of course."

The reminder seemed to click with the two as they smiled back at her. "Oh,  _Mabel!_ " Rosanna stated.

"We haven't seen you around in years!" Reginald added. "How have you been?"

"Great!" Mabel told him as she began to pull a single flyer from her stack. "But you know what would make me feel even greater?" She held out the flyer to the two, with Reginald taking it for closer inspection. "Checking out the Mystery Shack! You may not know this, but it's still around and it's still as mysterious as ever! Maybe when you two and the kiddo are free, you all could come on over and-"

"Nuh-uh," Reginald cut off as he handed the flyer back to her.

Mabel took the flyer back and looked back at him in confusion. "Huh?"

"Supporting that old excuse for an attraction?" Reginald questioned as he raised an eyebrow. "No way. After everything we've heard, there's no way the Mystery Shack is ever getting another penny from us."

"Sorry, Mabel," Rosanna said as she and Reginald began to walk off with their stroller. "You're great, but we will never support that crusty, old house of lies again."

Mabel held the returned flyer up disappointedly as she watched the two walk away. She looked back at the flyer and shrugged. "Oh well, maybe it's just bad word of mouth," she told herself. "Or the fact that Stan ruined their proposal. That might have something to do with it too."

She searched around for another person to target with her ads. Soon, she recognized Mr. Poolcheck walking out the mini-mart with a bag of groceries. He looked as stern as always, so she was hesitant about approaching him, but felt it was worth a shot nonetheless.

"Hey, Mr. Poolcheck!" Mabel greeted as she casually walked up to him.

"WHAT?! WHO?! WHERE?!" he burst suddenly, causing Mabel to flinch. He frantically glanced around until he spotted Mabel right in front of him. "Oh, it's you," he acknowledged in a calmer tone. "You got taller."

"Um, yeah," Mabel nodded, still put off by his previous outburst. "It has been four years after all."

"Has it now?" Poolcheck questioned quietly as he thought about the time that has passed. "Ah, I guess it has been four years, hasn't it? Interesting. Very interesting. Ya know, it is truly funny when you think about how fast time passes."

"Yeah, it is!" Mabel agreed, surprised by Poolcheck's calm and looser tone compared to the tough and strict man that she remembers him as. "Gee, Mr. Poolcheck, you're a lot less stressed out nowadays than I remember."

"Ah yes," Poolcheck nodded. "My doctor had informed me around the same time that despite my generally good health and impeccable build, my blood pressure was unacceptably high. I had to start attending therapy and doing yoga sessions to help alleviate my stressful demeanors and become  _pure_." He then closed his eyes as he pressed his hands together and bowed forward, inhaling and exhaling deeply. " _Namaste._ "

"Namaste, indeed," Mabel cheerfully returned. "Maybe you can express some of that pureness of yours around at the Mystery Shack!" she said as held a flyer out to him.

Poolcheck's eyes then burst open and began twitching, as well as suddenly going bloodshot. " _T-t-the M-My-MYSTERY SHACK?!_ " He took a few steps back and dropped to his knees. He then started screaming at the top of his lungs, which brought the attention of everyone on the block.

Mabel stood frozen in fear with her arm still extended out and offering the flyer. She glanced around at the townsfolk turning their eyes toward her and the livid Poolcheck. She wasn't sure how to possibly respond to the current situation.

Mr. Poolcheck kept screaming for a solid moment until he eventually calmed down a bit. He started taking a bunch of deep breaths before finally standing up. He straightened up his posture but started to shiver as he tried to keep it. He looked back down at Mabel and took another deep breath.

"I  _apologize_ ," he spat out calmly through his clenched teeth. "But I would prefer  _not_ to visit the Shack after the latest  _news_." He then grabbed his grocery bag and aggressively dug through it until he found a picture of a puppy. He forcefully stared at the picture for a good moment until he calmed down even further. He then began to smile and calmly giggle at the picture for a minute until he shoved the picture back into his grocery bag. He then straightened his posture once more before walking off with his normally stern expression on his face again.

The townsfolk then directed their attention toward Mabel, who continued to stand frozen in place, incredibly confused at what had just happened. She then shook her head and thought about what Mr. Poolcheck had mentioned about refusing to go to the Shack because of the 'latest news', which made her curious.

"Latest news?" she restated. "What does he mean by that?"

"YOU!" a deep, belligerent voice boomed at her.

Startled, she turned around and immediately caught sight of Manly Dan marching toward her angrily. She smiled and waved at him as he approached her. "Oh, hi there, Mr. Corduroy!"

"Don't you 'Hi there, Mr. Corduroy' me!" Manly Dan scolded. "What do you think you're doing trying to advertise that dreadful place to us?"

"Dreadful place? You too?" Mabel asked, confused by everyone's sudden turn on the Shack. "What happened? I thought everyone loved the Mystery Shack!"

"Not after we figured out that there ain't no mystery about that shack!" Manly Dan exclaimed angrily. "We've seen through the lies of the damned place! We know the truth!"

Mabel continued to stare at him with an addled expression for some time. "That the vending machine chocolates that say 'no nuts' actually do have some nuts in them?"

"What? No!" Manly Dan angrily denied. He grabbed an issue of the local Gravity Falls Gossiper from his back pocket and shoved it in Mabel's face. "Haven't you read the newspaper?" he asked her as he pointed directly at an article titled 'Mystery Shack is a HACK!'. Mabel stared at the paper in shock as she took it from Manly Dan and read the article closely. "Your 'Mystery Shack' was just recently exposed for having nothing but fake attractions and items that were used to deceit and scam us out of spending money for all these years!"

Mabel glanced through the article quickly, seeing how it managed to say exactly what Manly Dan summed up. The article used images of the Shack's faked attractions such as the Sascrotch, Sack of Mystery, Tarantulip, Thigh-clops, and other made up artifacts to support its claim. Of course, Mabel knew that the Shack's items weren't legitimate, but to see the public finally learn about it when the Shack has been around for over thirty years was incredibly hard to process.

"Wait, so people still read the newspaper?" Mabel asked awkwardly in the midst of all the tension.

"That's not the point! You're advertising fraud to us!" Manly Dan continued to rebuke as he grabbed a flyer from Mabel's stack. "It's bad enough that my daughter is still working under such a terrible name when she has more important business at hand! I don't need people like you trying to shove this garbage down our throats!" He then took the flyer and ripped it in half. The surrounding townsfolk began to cheer as he then took the torn halves of the flyer and began to tear those apart as well.

Mabel, however, stopped paying attention to Manly Dan and glanced back at the newspaper. While the crowd was distracted by Dan now beginning to absolutely pulverize the flyer's remains, Mabel quietly slipped away from the crowd and ran around the corner of the street with the rest of her stack of flyers and the newspaper. She needed to meet up with Dipper and remind him what was really going on with the Shack's decreasing popularity and sales. As well as save him in the possible case that he's possibly receiving the same harsh treatment that she suffered for advertising.

After turning a few street corners, she eventually spotted him normally stapling flyers to the side of a building. "Dipper!" she called out as she began to sprint toward him.

He turned toward her after posting a flyer up. He immediately noticed that she was in some sort of distress based on the look on her face. "What happened?"

"Dipper, I figured out why the Shack has been doing poorly recently!" she revealed as she showed him the issue of the Gossiper, pointing out the specific article calling out the Mystery Shack.

He took it from her hands and read over it. "'The Mystery Shack is a hack. Attached to this article are images depicting the true nature of Gravity Falls' most infamous tourist attraction, which was discovered to be nothing less than a shameless cash grab using...fake attractions?!' What?! I mean, it's not wrong, but what?! They seriously just found out about this?"

"I know, right!" Mabel exclaimed. "Did people totally forget that Soos literally called all the attractions fake the day that Stan made him the new owner?"

"Exactly! This is ridiculous!" Dipper exclaimed, becoming infuriated. "Are people seriously getting bent over this  _now?_ " He looked back at the newspaper and raised an eyebrow. "Also, people still read newspapers?"

"HEY! THERE THEY ARE!" a voice called, startling the two. They turned around to spot Manly Dan and the rest of the townsfolk in an angry mob approaching the two.

"Mabel?!" Dipper asked fearfully as he began to take slow steps backward, completely muddled by what was going on.

"Oh yeah," Mabel began. "I forgot to say that the town is pretty mad at us for advertising the Shack. Mostly me, but they probably won't skip out on you either."

"GET THEM!" Manly Dan ordered as the mob started to rush at the two.

"RUN DIPPER!" Mabel warned as she dropped the rest of her flyers and began running as fast as she could around the corner away from the mob.

"I am getting VERY tired of running after and away from things this week," Dipper said aggravatedly as he also dropped his stack of flyers to follow his sister away from the angry mob that continued to pursue them.


	10. The Gossiper: Part 2

Dipper and Mabel continued running for their lives as the angry mob of townsfolk continued to chase them through the town with no signs of giving up.

"Dipper, we've been running for a whole minute!" Mabel called out to him as she focused her eyes on the road ahead of them. "We can't keep doing this forever!"

"I'm thinking!" Dipper called back, actively trying to process a means of escaping the situation at hand. He noticed they were about to pass another corner and an idea came to mind. "I got it! Mabel, this way!"

Dipper grabbed Mabel's arm and pulled her to the right as they turned the corner of the street. As soon as they turned the corner, he quickly pulled her into an alleyway before the mob caught up to see them. Dipper crouched behind a dumpster and patted the ground beside him for Mabel.

"Right here!" he quietly ordered her.

"Ugh, of course  _you'd_  suggest hiding behind a dumpster," Mabel groaned in disgust as she began to crouch down beside him.

"Just do it!" he ordered again, knowing that it wasn't exactly an appropriate moment for this type of bickering. She did and pinched her nose to block the unpleasant scent of the dumpster from entering her nostrils, which Dipper himself didn't really mind.

Within a few seconds, the two could hear the mob continuing to actively pursue them around the corner. Without searching around, Manly Dan and the rest of the mob turned the corner and continued to riot straight down the road ahead of them, completely avoiding the alleyway. Dipper stuck his head out from behind the dumpster to scout and verify that they were in the clear.

"Alright, I think they're gone," he claimed as he stood up. He held his hand out to Mabel to help pull her up. "That was the second time I've been chased by an angry mob of people this week and also the second time I used that trick and it worked! You can thank me later."

"My hero," Mabel said sarcastically as she snatched the newspaper away from his hands. She looked back again at the article on the Mystery Shack and frowned. "Now we have this to worry about."

Dipper leaned over beside her to read the newspaper again as well. "So this is the reason everyone is so angry? A newspaper exposing the Mystery Shack?"

"I guess so," Mabel sighed as she lowered the paper worriedly. "What're we going to do? If the Shack isn't popular anymore, then it doesn't matter whether Soos finds the deed or not. The Shack's still going to have a bad reputation because of this stupid paper!"

Mabel threw the newspaper on the floor frustratedly, landing with the front side up. Dipper glanced at the front cover, looking directly at the name 'Gravity Falls Gossiper'.

"The Gravity Falls Gossiper, huh?" Dipper said as he narrowed his eyes suspiciously. He picked up the paper and turned to the back cover, which revealed a picture of Toby Determined with the title 'Owner' underneath it. He turned the cover toward Mabel and pointed out to Toby's picture. "I think I got a pretty good idea of who's behind this mess."

Mabel gasped. "Of course! I forgot that Toby wrote the newspaper here!"

"I did too until I noticed that this was the Gossiper we're talking about- the most infamous paper in town," Dipper said as he read through a few more lines in the paper while slowly walking out of the alleyway. He looked up from the paper and noticed the Gravity Falls Gossiper building conveniently across the street from them. "And would you look at that?" he pointed out with a grin. Mabel walked up beside him and looked over at the building as well. "I say we head on over and give Toby a piece of our minds, don't ya think?"

Mabel grinned back at him as she cracked her knuckles. "Yeah. Let's make up for the past four years."

"Woah, woah!" Dipper exclaimed with unease, his tone alerting her to calm down. "I was only suggesting we talk to him. Nothing crazy."

"Fine," Mabel moped disappointedly.

The two then promptly walked across the street over to the Gravity Falls Gossiper, simultaneously watching their surroundings in case the angry mob returned. Upon realizing the coast was clear, the two made their way to the front of the building. Dipper stood in front of the door, while Mabel tried to peek through the windows, but the interior blinds were down.

"Drat!" Mabel exclaimed. "Can't see if anyone's inside."

"Don't worry. We're going in anyway," Dipper replied, standing back from the door. "On three: one, two, three!"

Mabel ran up to the door and kicked it open, slamming it against the wall inside. The impact of the door hitting the wall inside was enough to snap it off the door frame and fall to the ground, causing another large slam.

"Still a bit overkill, Mabel," Dipper reminded as he walked inside next to her. "We aren't cops. I was just going to turn the handle."

"Sorry," Mabel replied with an awkward smile.

"Ah! Teenage  _cops!_ " exclaimed the voice of Toby Determined, who was cowering in the corner beside his desk. He shook his pencil point in front of himself defensively. "Stay back you  _fiends!_ "

"Cut it out Toby, I just said we're not cops," Dipper demanded.

"Then  _why'd_  you two just break down my  _door?_ " Toby asked. "You could've just  _knocked!_ "

"Because my sister knows nothing about subtlety," Dipper replied, glancing over at Mabel with an unamused expression.

"Not my fault that you'd rather do things the boring Dipper way," Mabel said, crossing her arms. "I just wanted to make things a little more exciting."

"We're not trying to make things exciting," Dipper said with a facepalm. "We're trying to get answers! Just follow my lead, please?" Mabel bitterly responded with an eye roll.

"What could you two  _scoundrels_  possibly want from  _me?_ " Toby asked, still waving his pencil at them.

"Spill the beans, Toby. Why have you been calling out the Mystery Shack in your papers?" Dipper interrogated.

"Yeah! Your papers have been ruining the business!" Mabel added.

"What? I haven't been writing anything about the Mystery Shack," Toby responded, getting up from the floor.

"Oh yeah?" Dipper questioned as he held out the article from the Gossiper and shoved it in Toby's face. "Explain this, then."

"'The Mystery Shack is a hack?'" Toby read aloud in confusion. He looked back up at Dipper. "I didn't write this!"

"Dude, it's your newspaper," Dipper pressed, not convinced.

"It is!" Toby admitted. "But I'm not the main writer anymore!"

"Wait, what?" Dipper said, confused, lowering the newspaper down. "You have another main writer working for you?"

" _Someone_  was desperate for a job," Mabel whispered over to him.

"You think  _I_  could keep writing the Gossiper on my own after all the years  _I've_  been running it?" Toby asked, finally getting up from the floor. "I've needed another writer to help me for years now! And what do you know? Someone actually accepted  _willingly!_ "

"You raised their paycheck a bunch, didn't you?" Mabel questioned, unconvinced by his statement.

Toby frowned and looked down guiltily. "About nine times," he admitted. He then walked to the other side of the room and pointed out a door to another room. "He also asked me to divide the office in half so he doesn't have to look at me while he  _works_. But the point is- I have an  _actual_   _employee!_ " He did a celebratory dance, thrusting his arms forward and kicking his legs as he hopped from foot to foot. " _Hachacha!_ "

Ignoring Toby's horrific little dance, Dipper glanced at the door. "So the real writer is in here?" he asked, gesturing toward the door.

"Yep! He's the one responsible for  _all_  your problems!" Toby nodded as he walked back to his desk. "Now if you two will  _excuse me_ , I have to go online and buy a new door for my  _office_."

As Toby began typing away on his computer, Dipper and Mabel walked up to the door to the writer's office.

"Alright, Mabel. Remember, NO kicking the door open this time," Dipper demanded. "Got it?"

"Fine," Mabel nodded. "Now let's bust this sucka!"

Dipper put his hand on the doorknob and turned slowly, pushing the door open. He and Mabel walked in and looked forward to face the writer. The writer looked up from his computer and gasped once he saw Dipper and Mabel, who also gasped once they saw the writer, who wore khakis and a light blue polo shirt. He was slightly chubby, with relatively pale, freckled skin. He wore a visor cap on top of his head, which was coated in white hair.

"Gideon?!" Dipper and Mabel exclaimed in disbelief.

"My-oh-my," Gideon Gleeful grinned as he stood up from his desk. "If it isn't Dipper and Mabel Pines. After four long years, we finally meet again."

* * *

Ryland rode his bike up to the front of the Mystery Shack. He got off and promptly chained it up beside the gift shop before hurriedly rushing to the door. Immediately he stopped and stared at the front. A sign 'Closed' sign was posted on the front.

"'Closed?'" he read aloud, confused.

"Yo Lando," a voice said behind him. He turned around and spotted Wendy hitching her own bike beside his.

"Oh, hey Wendy," he waved as she began making her way up to the front door beside him. "Did you know we were closed today? I know at this time, I'd usually be late, but I still skipped out on breakfast to, at the very least, not be  _terribly_  late. And so if we're closed today, I'm gonna be a little irritated."

Wendy looked at the 'Closed' sign and just shrugged. "Soos never said anything about us being closed today, but hey, if the sign says closed, what can we do?"

"Well, crap," Ryland said disappointedly as he rubbed his stomach. "That means I skipped out on omelets for nothing. If only I could go inside so I could snag from the vending machine before heading back."

"I got you, man," Wendy told him as she took a key out of her pocket. She put it into the keyhole of the door and unlocked it before turning the handle and opening the door for him.

"You have a key to the Shack?" Ryland asked curiously.

"Don't tell Soos," she asked as she put the key away. "Sometimes when I'm out late with friends and we're feeling too cheap or lazy to go out and buy food, we just drop by here so I can go snag from the vending machines."

Ryland nodded his head, impressed. "Niiice."

The two walked into the gift shop but immediately froze upon witnessing the sight before them. Glancing around the shop, they could see all their shelves and merchandise flipped over, everything laying amongst the floor. The entire shop was just a huge mess. It was as if someone came around and searched under and around everything.

"Well, this place certainly looks...not good," Ryland commented as he looked around.

Wendy tapped Ryland on the shoulder as she made a rush for the vending machines. "Quick! Let's grab the snacks and book it before Soos finds us and puts us in charge of cleaning this up!"

This reminder made Ryland realize that the last thing he wanted to do was spend his Tuesday cleaning up the gift shop. He quickly rushed beside Wendy, who was in the process of unlocking the vending machine. Within a few seconds, she popped the machine right open. The two collected a bunch of random snacks from the machine and held them in their arms. Once they had everything they wanted, Wendy kicked the vending machine door closed.

"There!" she exclaimed. "Let's get out of here!"

Before making a run for it, they heard a loud crash, one that sounded like a glass object breaking. The two turned around and looked in the direction of the living room door, where the sound presumably came from. Wendy and Ryland glanced at one another.

"Is Soos getting robbed?" Ryland whispered over to her.

"I don't know," Wendy whispered back as she walked over to the counter and placed her stack of snacks down. She grabbed an axe from behind the counter and held it in her hands readily. "But if he is, then that robber just made a huge mistake."

Ryland stared at her axe in shock. "Alright, so you just keep that right behind the counter. Yeah, that's...that's fine. Totally fine. I'm okay with that."

"Follow my lead," Wendy ordered him as she quietly stepped over to the door to the living room. Ryland placed his stack of snacks aside as well and stood beside her. The two suddenly heard footsteps getting closer to the door. "Someone's coming!" she whispered to over to Ryland.

She raised her axe in the air, prepared to swing. Ryland looked up at her axe and noticed that he didn't have his own weapon, so he raised his fists. The footsteps got louder until the door slammed open and Soos came running out in panic. Wendy's eyes bulged in surprise as she promptly hid her axe behind her back.

"Oh, hey, Soos!" she greeted awkwardly.

Ryland put his fists down and smiled forcefully at him. "Soos, my favorite boss! Haha!"

"Look, Soos, we had no idea that the Shack was actually closed today," she lied, trying to seem as innocent and convincing as possible. "We just assumed it was a mistake or something and we came in anyway." Soos didn't respond and instead kept glancing around the gift shop frantically, which she noticed. "Oh, Soos. We know it doesn't look like it, but we swear on our lives that we didn't make this mess."

"Yeah, it was like this when we got here!" Ryland supported. He glanced at the two piles of snacks that the two put down. "These snacks were also totally here as well. We absolutely had nothing to do with them. Totally didn't steal them from the vending machine. Nope, they were always there."

"Alright, I think he gets it, Ryland," Wendy reminded him, getting a tad irritated with how much attention he's bringing to the snacks.

Soos finally looked over at the two. "Oh, hey dudes. Didn't notice you for a second," he said before frantically searching around the gift shop. "Hey, have either of you seen the broom? I have the dustpan, but I can't find the broom. I really need the broom, man. I've searched everywhere for it, but I just can't find it."

"Um," Ryland said as he walked over to the vending machine and pulled a broom right beside it. "Right here next to the vending machine? Where we always keep it because of how many messes we make right next to it?"

Soos stared at Ryland for a moment before running up to him and grabbing the broom from him. "Thanks, dude!" he told him before running straight back into the living room.

Equally curious and concerned about Soos' behavior, the two walked into the living room. They immediately saw him frantically using the broom to clean up a bunch of glass shards on the floor. Wendy and Ryland glanced at each other, noticing their equal unease for the situation.

"Um, Soos? Are you okay?" Wendy asked, walking up to him.

"Yeah, you seem kinda stressed out," Ryland added as he walked up beside Wendy.

" _STRESSED OUT?!_ " Soos questioned as he got straight in Ryland's face, which freaked him. " _WHERE DID YOU GET THAT FROM?!_ "

"Alright, Soos," Wendy said calmly as she pushed him away from Ryland and into the living room chair. "You need to relax, man." She looked over at Ryland and pointed to the television. "Ryland, turn on the TV."

Soos tried to force himself up and out of Wendy's hold. "Nah, dude! I'm good! Couldn't be better! Trust me, I'm fi-"

Ryland turned on the television and the screen began viewing some sort of anime battle between two characters. Soos stared at the screen for a moment, processing the entertainment he was viewing. He started smiling as he sat back down and relaxed in his chair.

"Aw man, I love Serpent Sphere X," Soos said as he watched the show, now getting invested in the battle. Wendy looked over at Ryland and made a gesture telling him to shut the television off, which he did. Soos stared at the blank screen for a quick second before processing it was off. He rubbed his eyes and then blinked several times as he looked around the room.

"Soos?" Wendy asked, grabbing his attention. "How do you feel, man?"

Soos slumped back in his seat and frowned. "Aw man. I don't know anymore, dude. I can't find the deed to the Mystery Shack anywhere."

"Deed to the Mystery Shack?" Ryland asked, raising an eyebrow.

Wendy had somewhat of a memory in regards to the deed to the Shack but had overall forgotten it had existed until Soos mentioned it. "What do you need the deed for?"

Soos stood up from his chair and sighed. "Long story short, dudes- if I don't find that deed soon, we might lose the Shack."

"What?!" Wendy asked, shocked. "Lose the Shack? Why?"

"We, uh, we may not have enough money to pay for this month's mortgage," Soos explained. "And because we never officially transferred the Shack from Stan to me and Melody, we're still under his name, which isn't all that great. So we need the deed to transfer the Shack to us officially so we don't lose it."

"Wait a minute," Wendy began as she processed the situation. "You mean you lost the one thing that can get you out of this situation?"

"IT'S BEEN FOUR YEARS, OKAY?!" Soos exclaimed defensively. "And it's not easy to keep track of a piece of paper! There's a reason I was never good at turning in homework!"

"Soos, this is, like, the most important paper for you to keep track of!" Wendy exclaimed.

"I know!" Soos acknowledged as he stuffed his face into his hands with guilt. He looked back up at the two. "But can you please help me did it! I'll do anything!"

Ryland thought for a moment. "Well, I have been meaning to ask for a raise…"

"Ryland, he's already having trouble affording the place," Wendy reminded while narrowing her eyes at him.

"You're right," Ryland quickly retracted. "In my head, I was thinking of how much of bad move that would be. My bad. Shouldn't have suggested that. If anything, you could lower my pay if you really wanted…" He looked up and took a second to actually think about what he was saying. "Wait, why am I doing this to myself?"

"Ryland!" Wendy scolded, getting somewhat irritated by his rambling.

"Sorry," Ryland quickly added before making a face that read 'I'll shut up now'.

Wendy glanced back at Soos. "Soos, we'll help you find the deed. No cost."

Soos stood up happily and immediately hugged the two. "Thanks, dudes!" He placed them back on the ground and reverted back to a more serious face. "Just whatever happens-  _don't_  tell Melody."

"No worries, Soos," Wendy assured. "Melody won't find out about anything."

"Hey guys," Melody said as she walked into the living room from the stairwell. The three turned toward her in shock and surprise. She was immediately floored when she saw the mess that the room was. "What happened in here?"

Soos, Wendy, and Ryland silently glanced at one another and around the room. None of them were sure how to respond.

"IT'S A SURPRISE BIRTHDAY PARTY!" Soos lied on the spot. "AND YOU'RE RUINING THE SURPRISE!"

"Huh?" Melody questioned, incredibly confused.

"GET OUT!" Soos said as he ran up to Melody and began lightly pushing her to the front door.

"Soos, my birthday is in December!" Melody tried to tell him as she was pushed out the front door.

"Um, never too early to celebrate!" Soos added. "Spend some time going out! Don't come back until, uh, later?" he told her as he shut the front door and locked her out of the house, leaving her staring at the front door in absolute confusion about what just happened.

Soos brushed his hands together as he confidently walked back into the living room. "There. That should buy us some time. Now, who's ready to find a deed?" Despite his confidence, Wendy and Ryland glanced at one another with unsure expressions.

* * *

Dipper and Mabel continued to stand in shock at the very sight of their former enemy, Gideon Gleeful, right in front of them again. The shock came mainly from the fact that he was now in a place of power where he could write articles against the Shack that have the damaging effect it did. Another factor would be his major change in appearance compared to last time.

For one, he obviously looks older and has gotten taller, having last dealt him while he was a ten-year-old. Now he was thirteen, and he looked like it too. The most notable change was how different his general style became. Rather than a pompadour haircut, his hair was significantly trimmed down to the point where it was just simply combed up. His hair was still white, however, so it still had that oddity to it. But, at least it wasn't bigger than his head anymore.

Second, rather than the baby blue suit they were used to seeing him wear, he now wore a baby blue polo with dark slacks and dress shoes. He also wore a gray visor cap on his head. It was a much more casual look for him and it worked. Minus the white hair, their former enemy now looked like an actual normal person.

"Dipper and Mabel Pines!" Gideon cheerfully named. "This is a pleasant surprise. Please, come in! Have a seat! I insist!" he kindly asked, gesturing to a pair of seats right in front of him.

Dipper and Mabel stared at him for a moment, still processing his presence. The two then bitterly walked over to him, preparing to confront him over the whole situation.

"This is quite unexpected, I must say," he told them as he sat back in his chair, kicking his legs back on top of his desk. "How long has it been? Four years? My-oh-my, does time pass," he said with a little giggle. He glanced over at Mabel and scanned her appearance. "And Mabel, you look as darling as ever."

"Ugh, it hasn't even been a minute yet and you're already being creepy," Mabel replied in disgust.

"I apologize, but I just can't help myself," Gideon shrugged, with Mabel rolling her eyes at the statement. "Some facts just need to be pointed out."

"Oh god, I'm gonna hurl," Mabel said, clenching her stomach.

"Enough, Gideon," Dipper demanded. "What are you doing working for Toby Determined?"

"What do you mean?" Gideon asked. "It's just my job. The reasoning couldn't be clearer."

"Yeah, well, I feel like you going from an evil kid to a normal newspaper writer sounds a bit suspicious," Dipper explained.

Gideon sighed as he lowered his eyebrows at Dipper. "I see your persistence hasn't changed in four years. Fine. I'll tell you," he said as he got up from his seat. "Ever since Bill's defeat and the end of that summer, I attempted to turn over a new leaf from my former, subjectively 'evil' actions. As I told you both in our last confrontation at your birthday party, I strived to become nothing more than a regular kid."

"And let me guess," Mabel began, crossing her arms. "You didn't?"

"Actually, I did!" Gideon refuted. "Although, I wasn't that great at it, admittedly. I kept my old prison buddies around to beat up the bullies for me throughout middle school," he said as he looked away from the two, thinking of his past doings. "But that's beside the point. After that summer, I eventually realized I had no goals. I have no motives, no objectives. At least when I had the journal, I knew I had wanted to take over Gravity Falls. It gave me a purpose. But without it, I felt worthless." He walked over to the window on the other side of the room beside the door from which Dipper and Mabel entered. He looked outside. "That's when I realized that beyond my lust for power, there was something about the journal that I realized I loved more than anything else- the  _marvelous_ storytelling!"

Dipper and Mabel stared at him blankly for a moment, somewhat caught off guard by his response.

"Wait, what?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Marvelous storytelling?" Mabel added.

"Yeah!" Gideon excitedly confirmed. "I mean, I was obsessed with chasing ultimate power because of it, of course! But the hidden truth was that I was also fascinated with the way it was written! Some of the adventures that your Great Uncle described were so well told! I still get jitters just thinking about how intense they were."

"I mean, yeah, I gotta agree," Dipper nodded, glancing over at Mabel. "I always used to think Journal 3 was the type of book that should be published and sold to millions around the world."

"Exactly!" Gideon agreed as he began walking back over to his desk. "And so, my fascination with Journal 2 inspired me to write my own stories and articles, and over time, I realized that I had a passion for it. I decided to try to find jobs writing for others, whether it be magazines or newspapers, but it turns out...most of them aren't quite willing to hire a thirteen-year-old to write for them. Especially one that has been arrested before."

"But the Gravity Falls Gossiper welcomes  _all!_ " Toby said, popping his head into the room.

"I'M TRYING TO HAVE A CONVERSATION HERE, TOBY!" Gideon scolded angrily.

"Yes, Gideon," Toby moped as he slowly stuck his head out of the office.

Gideon cleared his throat as he sat back down in his chair and directed his attention back to the twins. "Yeah, as you can see, Toby was my only real option. But I'm content working for him after the several raises he's offered and after getting half of the office so I don't have to see him while I write. And hey, I get my writing published and seen by others!"

"That's great and all," Mabel began, snatching the newspaper from Dipper's hands and raising it in front of him, pointing to the Mystery Shack article. "But can you explain this?"

Gideon's face somehow managed to pale more than it already was once he caught the sight of the article. "Alright, so, I guess this looks bad…"

"You think?" Dipper questioned, in an annoyed tone. "Tell us. Why are you writing articles defaming the Shack?"

"Yeah, the Shack is risking foreclosure because of your stupid article!" Mabel added. "Do you  _try_ to make us miserable?"

Gideon bit down on his lip hesitantly before suddenly standing up from his seat, slamming his hands amongst the top of the desk. "Alright! I admit that I wrote the article! But I didn't  _want_ to write it!"

"Oh, great," Dipper rolled his eyes. "Here we go with the excuses."

"It's not an excuse!" Gideon defended. "Look, the truth is, a banker for the local Gravity Falls Bank wanted me to write it. He provided me the photos of the fake props and attractions for me to publish alongside the article and offered to pay me for it!"

"A banker?" Mabel thought aloud, looking over at Dipper. "Soos said that the bank doesn't like Stan after everything he's done. You think a banker is actively trying to shut Stan down considering we're still under his name?"

"That's one possibility," Dipper admitted as he thought about it as well. He looked back at Gideon. "Who is this banker?"

Gideon rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "Well...I was also kind of paid not to say anything about him and I feel like that's an obligation I need to-"

Mabel slammed her fist down on Gideon's desk before grabbing him by his collar and pulling him over the desk, giving him a very threatening look as she raised her fist in front of him. "WHAT'S HIS NAME, YOU LITTLE, SOUTHERN, SOFT-SKINNED TWERP?!"

Gideon trembled in her grasp, holding up his hands defensively. "Okay, okay! He's some feller by the name of Mr. Nessman. I don't know his first name, I swear!"

Mabel threw Gideon back in his chair and walked back beside Dipper, who was thinking.

"Mr. Nessman, huh?" Dipper thought aloud.

"Do we know anyone named Nessman?" Mabel asked him.

"I don't think so," Dipper said, turning around and beginning to walk back toward the door. "Looks like we're going to have to take a trip to the bank."

"What about Gideon?" Mabel asked, glancing back at a cowering Gideon.

"Leave him," Dipper ordered. "What else can he do? He's told us everything we need to know."

"Let me help!" Gideon asked, standing up from his chair and walking toward the two. "Ya know, just in case things go wrong! I can back you two up!"

"No," Dipper refused, turning back to him. "Things will only go wrong if you're around. You could still be working for this guy for all we know."

"Especially considering you just refused to sell him out a minute ago," Mabel added, beginning to follow Dipper toward the door.

"It was paid order!" Gideon defended. "It was an opportunity!"

"Everything's an opportunity to you, Gideon!" Dipper scolded, getting in his face. "But you never take a moment to think about what you'll end up doing to others! I mean, did you once think about us when writing that article?"

"Well, to be fair, it has been four years since our last meeting," Gideon defended with a nervous smile.

"See? This is why we can't take you seriously," Dipper said with a facepalm. "I can't believe I thought you could change," he said as he opened the door and stepped out of the office. "Let's go, Mabel."

"B-but, I have changed!" Gideon tried to tell them. "I'm not evil anymore!"

"It isn't about whether you're evil or not," Mabel explained to him as she walked over to the door. "Maybe you're not 'evil' anymore, but you're still just as selfish as you've always been. You're still a thorn in our sides. A smaller thorn, but a thorn nonetheless."

She left the room, leaving Gideon alone in his office with a look of guilt splattered amongst his face. The thought of being called a 'thorn' was unsettling to him. He remembered during Bill's invasion how he had made the switch over to the good side and actually had something to fight for. And since then, he had really made an effort to change, but here he is being told that he hasn't actually changed much at all. And it really stung.

Toby then walked into the room and looked over at him. "So, how's that Deathball story that I asked you to do?"

"CAN'T YOU SEE I'M BUSY, TOBY?!" Gideon snapped.

"I'm just doing my  _job!_ " Toby replied as he ran out of the office in fear.

* * *

For a small town, Gravity Falls actually had a pretty decent sized bank, running approximately three stories high with a pretty wide length. It was one of the most modern-looking buildings in the whole town but still had somewhat of an old-school vibe, being constructed from bricks and concrete, which allowed it to fit in with the rest of the town. Dipper and Mabel never went to the town bank before, nor have they ever had a reason to before, as twelve wasn't exactly the age for one to start involving themselves in finances.

They were simply there in search of Mr. Nessman and to get to the bottom of why he would want Gideon to defame the Shack. As Mabel had suggested before, it was certainly possible there's a connection between him and the bank's general bad relationship with Stan. They hoped that confronting him would be the end of their hunt and they wouldn't be directed toward someone else. At the very least, they knew Gideon wrote the article that caused this mess in the first place. Now it was a matter of finding the intentions of the one who wanted the article written.

The twins entered the bank and looked around the place, seeing how many people were around talking to bankers, accessing ATMs and discussing other financial business. It was pretty decently filled for a Tuesday afternoon. The two approached an open teller window with an available banker.

The banker looked up at the two. "Hello there! How may I help you two?"

"Hi, we're looking for a banker by the name of Mr. Nessman," Dipper told him. "We need to talk to him."

"Nessman," the banker repeated. "Yes, I believe he's up in his office on the third floor. I'll ring up the door to the left and you can take the stairs up to him."

The banker pressed a button and the door to the left buzzed open. Dipper turned the handle, opened the door and walked inside, with Mabel following right behind him. They walked up the stairs all the way up to the third floor, where they saw one set of double doors at the end of a short hallway.

"Is his office the only room on the third floor?" Mabel asked as they began walking down the hallway.

"Not sure," Dipper said as he looked around at the walls. Among the walls were multiple paintings of different pieces of abstract artwork. Nothing ominous, but he felt increasingly unsure the closer they got to the office. "We really should've done some research on this guy before coming here."

"He's just a banker," Mabel shrugged off. "The only evil thing about bankers is how they try to outsell you."

"I don't know," Dipper said as he kept looking around. "I have a bad feeling about this."

They reached the door and Dipper firmly knocked on the door and stood back.

"So what's the plan?" Mabel asked.

"Just go about this casually," Dipper told her. "This isn't like Toby or Gideon. We don't know this guy, so let's just stick to asking questions in a calm and orderly manner instead of posing as threats. Got it?"

"Calm and orderly manner," Mabel repeated confidently. "Got it!"

The door clicked, indicating it was open. Dipper placed his hand on the door and held it open for his sister, before walking in right after her. As soon as they walked in, they noticed the dimly lit room, which contrasted far more with the light and colorful atmosphere brought upon by the abstract paintings. Nessman's office was dark and the only light came from the sunlight piercing through the windows in the back. The office was also large, seeming to practically take up the whole floor.

Dipper cautiously walked up to the desk in the center of the room, where there was a chair facing away from them, where Mr. Nessman presumably sat. "Um, are you Mr. Nessman?"

The chair slowly turned around toward the twins. In the chair sat an elegant-looking man, who wore a dark blue suit, a pair of glasses, and had short brown spiked hair. He looked forward at the twins with a serious expression for a moment. The twins glanced at one another with apprehensive expressions.

The man's serious expression then switched into one of delight. "Haha! Indeed, I am!" he said cheerfully as he stood up from his desk and walked over to the twins. He held his hand out and eagerly shook both of twins' hands. "Nessman's the name, and working with finances is my game! How may I assist you two today? In need of any financial assistance?"

"Oh, um," Dipper responded, somewhat put off by Nessman's politeness. "No, no financial assistance needed. We actually came by to see if we could ask you some questions."

"Questions? Cool, cool," Mr. Nessman replied calmly as he stepped back behind his desk and sat down in his chair. "I'm down with that. Hit me with whatever you got. I'm more than willing to provide an answer to anything," he told them. He gestured to the set of seats in front of his desk. "But please, I hate to see you both stand so uncomfortably in front of me. Have a seat! Relax! Mi casa es su casa. Actually, it's not really my house, it's my office, but you get the idea! Just have a seat!" Dipper and Mabel did as followed and sat in two chairs he gestured toward. "And if you don't mind me asking, what are your names?"

"Um, they're not important," Dipper answered with a nervous smile. "You see, we're just a pair of surveyors going around town asking people questions about Gravity Falls. We were hoping we could get some personal input from you."

"That's cool!" Mr. Nessman replied gladly. "Yeah, go for it! I love giving input."

"Alright, cool," Dipper said as he pulled his journal out from the inside of his hoodie. He opened up and took a pen out. "First question: what is your opinion on the Mystery Shack?"

" _Pfft_ , way to be subtle," Mabel cracked under her breath, quiet enough for Mr. Nessman to miss.

"Hmm, good question," Mr. Nessman said as he thought over an answer. "I think it has plenty of financial opportunities that aren't being properly utilized at the moment."

Mabel raised an eyebrow at this response and looked over at Dipper, who also seemed curious by the answer. "Interesting," he said as he pretended to scribble in his journal. "Any chance you could expand on that?"

"Well, allow me to break a law to give you that answer," Mr. Nessman chuckled. "But ever since the weirdpocalypse happened four years back, the Pines family and their ownership of the Shack have increased in popularity due to their role amongst the chaos. And at the same time, the value of the land the Mystery Shack sits on has also increased by several margins. I mean, that old hut is sitting on land with more value than most mansions! But it's being disrespected by an old wooden house still being run to the ground with fake knick-knacks. In my eyes, Stan Pines doesn't have a clue what to do with that place anymore."

"So that's why you hired Gideon to destroy our reputation? So you can just sweep in and take the land from us?!" Mabel intervened angrily.

"Mabel!" Dipper exclaimed angrily at the fact that she's breaking their cover. "What about that is calm and orderly?"

"Mabel…" Mr. Nessman repeated as she stared at the her analytically. "Mabel Pines?"

Dipper's heart dropped upon realizing that he had accidentally blown their cover by revealing Mabel's name and that he's just as much at fault as she was. Nessman's eyes then glanced over to Dipper.

"And you're Dipper Pines!" Mr. Nessman analyzed. "I knew you two looked familiar. You're Pines! How could I not make that connection before?"

"Look, we don't want any trouble," Dipper said, holding his hands up defensively.

"Oh, neither do I!" Mr. Nessman said with a cheerful smile. "In fact, I'm actually glad you two have come to talk about this!" he said as he stood up from his chair. "Because now we can properly talk business and opportunity! For the both of us!"

"What do you mean?" Dipper asked skeptically.

"Look, I know why you two are here," Mr. Nessman revealed. "You've obviously come to defend the Shack and confront me on my plans. Yes, I did hire Gideon to write the article so the Shack's reputation and sales would plummet. But honestly, I'm not trying to be anyone's enemy here. All I'm trying to do take on a huge financial opportunity. As I said before, your Mystery Shack sits on some pretty wealthy land. If I can eliminate the Shack and set it for foreclosure, I can personally buy out the property and use it for, err, personal business ventures!"

"That's terrible!" Mabel exclaimed in horror of Nessman's plan.

"Is this supposed to convince us that what you're doing is good?" Dipper asked, also getting angry by his plan.

"Wait, wait, wait! Let me finish!" Nessman pleaded. "Look, as it's looking right now, the likelihood of the Shack paying off its mortgage this month is very slim. But I don't want to necessarily kick you guys to the curb, either. Again, I'm not trying to be anyone's enemy. So instead, I'm offering a trade. The value of the Shack's land is too high to pass up, but if you two let me go through with the foreclosure, I will assign your family a few million dollars in credit to buy another property, just as long as it's outside of Gravity Falls. And with a few million, you can do A LOT better than that rundown hut in the middle of this crappy town that you're currently staying in. And if you really wanted to, you could just set up the Mystery Shack again somewhere else! You almost have nothing to lose! It's a great deal if you ask me! A lot of other bankers would just take the property away and be done with you, but not  _this guy!_ " Nessman said as he pointed toward himself boastfully. "So what do you say? Do we have ourselves a deal?"

Dipper and Mabel looked at one another, both considering the offer. They nodded at one another as they visibly confirmed one another's thoughts as if they could read each other's minds. They turned back toward Mr. Nessman.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Nessman," Dipper began. "But we're going to have to deny that offer. We've grown too attached to this town and the Mystery Shack in a single summer that we could never leave it all behind in favor of some big house in some average town."

"Yeah," Mabel agreed. "The Mystery Shack may be some rundown hut, but it's  _our_ rundown hut. And Gravity Falls is home to some of the best people we know. Some of greatest friends, and some of our best family."

"We've made timeless memories here in Gravity Falls," Dipper continued. "This town is basically a second home. I mean, I almost consider it more home than our real home and we've barely spent more than a single summer here. The people, the places, the weirdness- we love it all."

"And we wouldn't trade it for all the money in the world," Mabel concluded.

Mr. Nessman nodded. "I understand," he said respectfully. He then reached for a button under his desk and pressed it. At that moment, Dipper and Mabel were strapped into their seats as metal cuffs chained their arms to the arm rests and their legs to the chair legs. "But that doesn't mean I agree!"

"What the-?" Mabel said as she tried to pull herself from the constraints.

"What is this?" Dipper asked as he also struggled in the constraints. He looked back at Nessman. "What are you doing?"

Nessman pulled a large white sign and a post from underneath his desk and placed it amongst the top of it. The sign read 'Foreclosure' in bright red. He looked back over the twins. "Seeing as you two are against me and my deal, I can only assume that you two are simply going to try to get in my way. So, I'm temporarily trapping you two here in my office while I head on over to the Mystery Shack and put it up for foreclosure!"

"What?!" Mabel panicked. "You can't do that! We still haven't run out of time to pay off the mortgage!"

"Except that doesn't quite matter," Mr. Nessman said as he pulled the sign and post from his desk. "According to the 'Dibs!' law, which is located in the official Gravity Falls Law Book, if an official Gravity Falls banker posts up an official foreclosure sign on any property close to foreclosure, that property is immediately set for foreclosure and cannot be removed by anyone who isn't a banker."

"Are you kidding me?!" Mabel exclaimed in disbelief. "You're making that up!" She glanced over at Dipper. "Dipper, tell him he's making that up."

"Actually, he isn't," Dipper informed her. "That's an actual law in the Gravity Falls Law Book. And as ridiculous as it is, it's no less real than any of the others. It's also far tamer than a few others as well."

"But we still have time to pay off mortgage! The Shack can't be set up for foreclosure if there's still time!" Mabel tried to reason.

"Except because all of your Great Uncle's refinances, we've been allowed to take away the Shack whenever we feel it poses further threat to the bank," Mr. Nessman told her with an evil grin. "Because this is the first personal contact we've had in regard to the Shack's financial situations in four years, I can write this little conversation off as a threat to us and finally put the Shack down with a reason."

"So you're going to lie about our visit so you have a reason to foreclose us?!" Dipper questioned. "And just keep us chained up in here at the same time?!"

"Where's the Gravity Falls law that says that any of this is okay?!" Mabel asked Nessman as she continued to try to struggle out of the metal constraints.

Nessman opened the door to his office with his sign and post and took a step outside. He looked back at the twins. "Oh, there isn't one, unfortunately."

"Then you should know you aren't going to get away with this," Dipper threatened as he clenched his fists within the restraints.

"With connections like mine, kid?" he said with a chuckle. "You'd be surprised." He laughed as he closed the door and left the office, leaving the two trapped within their chairs in a dark, barely illuminated office.


	11. The Gossiper: Part 3

Mabel continue to try to pull her hands free from the metal restraints of the chair. Despite her attempts, all she did was struggle. Dipper, on the other hand, sat in his chair without movement or attempt to escape. He looked on at Mabel's struggles defeatedly.

"Mabel, it's been ten minutes," he reminded her. "Just give it up."

"Give up?" she questioned, struck by her brother's already defeated motives. "Nessman's gonna shut down the Mystery Shack and you want to give up?"

"Even if we did get out of here, what makes you think we'll catch up?" Dipper asked. "Again, he's had a ten-minute head start. Also, we walked here. There's no way we'd reach him before getting to the Shack."

Mabel stopped struggling and looked daringly at Dipper. "So what's your plan then, brainiac? Since according to you, mine is apparently useless."

"My plan is...we just wait here," Dipper told her flat out. "And just hope that Soos found the deed by now because that's the only way we're going to get out of this one. Someone will eventually find us and release us. Then we'll report Nessman for locking us up here and hopefully, everything can just go on from there."

"So your plan is to rely on Soos for getting us out of this?" Mabel asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I don't know," Dipper shrugged. "I guess?"

"Yeah, I'll stick to my plan," Mabel said as she continued to struggle out of her constraints. "Regardless of how useless you think it is."

"Suit yourself," Dipper said, relaxing within the chair.

"Dipper, c'mon!" Mabel called out. "We're about to lose the Mystery Shack. Are you seriously just leaving everything to fate instead of actually trying to find a way out of this?"

"Mabel, I don't know a way out of this!" Dipper revealed. "Alright? I know I'm, like, the smart guy when it comes to these types of situations, but right now, I don't see any way of getting out of this. I just don't, okay? As much as I wanna get out and try to save the Mystery Shack, I just don't know how we'd be able to. Again, unless Soos comes through with that deed, I think we've lost this one."

Mabel stopped struggling in her chair again and slumped back in her chair sadly. She stared forward uneasily.

"So we waited four years for this?" Mabel asked, glancing over at Dipper dejectedly.

"Guess so," Dipper said defeatedly.

"What a summer, huh?"

"Yep," Dipper nodded.

The two sat in silence for a good moment considering their future once they lose the Shack, which is something neither of them wanted to do. But considering the current stakes, they believed it was the most likely future. Not that they didn't believe in Soos finding the deed in time, but knowing him, he wasn't exactly their brightest beacon of hope either.

A moment later, the two heard some noise. Large, pounding footsteps running around nearby. The footsteps seemed to get closer toward them, as the thumps they gave off seemed to get louder every second.

"You hear that?" Dipper asked Mabel, addressing the very obvious noise.

All of the sudden, the doors to Nessman's office broke down. Startled, the twins turned their necks around to face the broken double doors. A cloud of dust from the impact filled the air for a moment until a menacing figure stood before them. It was an incredibly bulky man with loads of tattoos on his arms, while also wearing a large black vest with some gear placed on his shoulder. He had long brown hair and a large mustache and beard. But his most notable feature was his pure blank eyes.

Dipper and Mabel recognized him at first glance, but couldn't place their finger on where they knew him from. They then looked on his shoulders, where Gideon was sitting.

"Gideon?!" Dipper and Mabel exclaimed in shock but also with a bit of relief.

" _Wooooo-we!_ " he exclaimed with a grin as he looked down at the two. "I reckon y'all are in need of a rescue?" He patted Ghost-Eyes on the shoulder. "Free 'em, Ghost-Eyes!"

Ghost-Eyes walked over to the two and glanced down at their restraints. Dipper looked back at Nessman's desk and remembered the button that he had switched to activate the trap.

"Quick! There's a switch over by his desk!" he told Ghost-Eyes, gesturing toward the desk with his head. "I'm pretty sure it can-"

"Too much button-pressing!" Ghost-Eyes cut off. He then placed his hands on their metal restraints and tore them off one by one until the two were freed.

"Um, that works too," Dipper said, somewhat stunned by Ghost-Eyes' strength, even though he knows he really shouldn't be.

"Glad I can be of some assistance, for once," Gideon gloated.

"Wait, how'd you know this would happen to us?" Mabel asked, standing up from the chair.

"I didn't, really," Gideon admitted. "But Nessman always did come off as a scary man to me. I figured that y'all having a direct confrontation with him wouldn't lead to any good, which is why I brought Ghost-Eyes here…"

"Sup," Ghost-Eyes greeted, waving his hand up.

"...and another ol' prison friend of mine who's waiting for us outside."

"You actually came to rescue us?" Dipper asked in surprise.

"I told y'all I wanted to help," he said as he crossed his arms and gave the two a broad look. "But you both denied me. Said I would only get in the way."

"Well, could you blame us?" Mabel asked, unsure what he was attempting to argue.

"Yeah," Dipper agreed. "Not really hard to assume after all you've done to us before."

"I know!" Gideon gave in and agreed. "But I'm trying to tell you! I wanna change. I'm sorry for writing the article on the Mystery Shack! I shouldn't have done it for the money. I should've thought about how it would affect you guys! I wanna be different than the last time you saw me! I want you two to look at me after four years and see all the new good in me rather than remember all the old bad I've done!" He cupped his hands together in a begging manner. "Please let me help! I really want to be a good guy this time!"

Dipper and Mabel glanced at one another with unsure looks. They thought about it for a minute.

"He did save us," Dipper began.

"I know," Mabel agreed. "But c'mon, it's  _Gideon_."

"Um, y'all know I can still hear you, right?" Gideon intervened, raising his hand up.

Dipper sighed and turned back to him. "Fine, you can help. But we're warning you- if there's  _any_  sign of a double cross…"

"There won't be!" Gideon assured. "I promise!"

"Alright," Dipper settled on hesitantly.

" _WOOOOO-WE!_ " Gideon cheered, throwing both his hands in the air jubilantly. "Look out, world! I'm one of the good guys!"

"Hey! There are the bad guys!" a banker called out as he pointed at Gideon and Ghost-Eyes from the broken doors that they had burst in from.

"Well, I guess I should've figured that running and crashing through the walls of a bank to get here was a bad idea," Gideon realized.

"Actually, it might be because I robbed this place before," Ghost-Eyes suggested.

A pair of security officers for the bank then ran inside and pointed taser guns around at everyone in the room. The original entryway into the office was now blocked off for the four.

" _Welp_ ," Ghost-Eyes said as he picked up Dipper and Mabel from the ground and placed them among each of his shoulders. "I think now's a good time for us to get out of here."

"But they're blocking our way to the stairs," Dipper addressed.

"Get them!" the banker ordered the two officers with tasers.

Ghost-Eyes turned away from the officers and began running toward one of Nessman's window. "Who said anything about taking the stairs?"

Dipper looked forward at the window that Ghost-Eyes was running toward and his eyes bulged in fear. "Wait, what?!"

Gideon wrapped his arms and legs securely around Ghost-Eyes' head as he glanced at the twins. "Yeah, y'all might wanna hold on tight."

At the same moment, Ghost-Eyes jumped and crashed through the window with the three riding on his shoulders. Dipper and Mabel quickly wrapped themselves around Ghost-Eyes' head and began screaming in fear as they began to fall toward the ground of the bank's parking lot. However, a truck in the lot drove right beneath them as they fell, and the four landed in the back of it, with Ghost-Eyes taking most of the impact from the fall.

After a moment of shock, Gideon stood up and looked into the rearview mirror to see the driver, who was his other prison friend, Killbone.

"Killbone!" Gideon exclaimed happily. "Nice catch!"

"Ain't the first time I pulled that stunt before, Gideon," Killbone said, smiling back at him. "You got your lil' friends?"

"Yeah, and we're about to be under some serious heat for breaking in," Gideon warned. "You gotta get us outta here!"

"Where to?" Killbone asked.

Gideon turned back to the Pines twins, who were still laying down in shock next to Ghost-Eyes after the landing. "Dipper? Mabel? Do y'all know where Nessman is heading?"

" _Ugggh_ ," Mabel groaned as she pulled herself off the ground. "What?"

"I asked, where's Nessman going?" Gideon repeated, panicking due to the time they were losing.

"Oh, oh!" Mabel exclaimed in realization once she processed his question. "He's going to the Mystery Shack to shut it down! We gotta get there before he does!"

"Head to the Mystery Shack, Killbone!" Gideon said as he turned back toward him.

"The what?" Killbone asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I SAID THE MYSTERY…!" Gideon began impatiently until he realized something. "Oh right. I mean, head to the Local Town Cheapskate!"

"Ohhhh, the Mystery Shack!" Killbone processed. He faced forward and prepared to start the truck again. "I gotcha now!"

Mabel raised an eyebrow as she looked over at Gideon, who caught her look of confusion. "Yeah, I may have used certain terms in reference to a lot of things related to y'all to the prisoners when we were still enemies."

Ghost-Eyes stood up and rubbed his head. He looked down at Dipper, who was still lying down from the fall. "Devil-child? Are you okay?" he asked as he picked him up from the ground onto his feet.

"I'm fine," Dipper said as he retracted his arm from Ghost-Eyes' grasp.

"Good," Ghost-Eyes said, stepping away from.

"Wait, did you just call me Devil-child?" Dipper asked as he processed what Ghost-Eyes said.

"Gideon, is your girlfriend okay?" Ghost-Eyes asked, disregarding Dipper's question.

Mabel placed her hands on her waist and glared at Gideon. "Seriously?"

"Wha...I don't…" Gideon stuttered with a blush. "I haven't even referred to you like that in years!"

"Isn't that what you called her just this aftern-" Ghost-Eyes began.

"ALRIGHT! ENOUGH!" Gideon ordered loudly. "Let's just...change the subject."

"Right…" Dipper said, finally involving himself within the matters. He looked over at Mabel. "We gotta warn Soos that Nessman's on his way to foreclose the Shack."

"Don't worry!" Mabel shouted, grabbing her phone from her back pocket. "Mabel's got this!"

* * *

The Mystery Shack's museum was a huge mess. Soos, Wendy, and Ryland had basically flipped over and sorted through every single attraction on display. Soos had even begun ripping through some of the floorboards of the Shack out of desperation of not being able to find the deed. He was becoming increasingly worried about their inability to find it.

Ryland searched underneath the stand of the Six Pack O' Lope and found a bag of chips. "Holy crap! I found a bag of Ghost Chips underneath the Six Pack O' Lope stand!"

Wendy glanced over at him. "Weren't those things banned back in 2008 for being too hot? Or was that because they caused kidney failure?"

"Well, considering we can't find this deed, I'm feeling kinda risky," he said as he tried to open the bag.

Wendy swiped the bag from Ryland's hands. "Yeeeaah...no. You're not taking the easy way out and leaving me to deal with this mess," she said as she threw the bag in the trash.

"Aw c'mon, we could've shared!" Ryland said.

"Yeah, but I kinda like my kidneys," Wendy shrugged.

The two then glanced over at Soos, who had suddenly received a phone call. He grabbed his phone from his pocket and looked who was calling.

"It's Mabel!" he announced as he looked over at Wendy and Ryland. He answered the phone. "Hello?" He began walking around the room as he listened to what Mabel was telling him. His eyes bulged. "What do you mean the bank is coming to foreclose us?!"

Wendy and Ryland's eyes also bulged at Soos' restatement and they glanced at one another in panic. However, the two looked behind themselves and saw Melody pop into the room with her eyebrows raised at Soos, who was facing the other way, completely unaware of her presence.

"Um, Soos?" Ryland tried to alert him, glancing back and forth between him and Melody.

"Hold on, Ryland," Soos said, glancing at him. His attention diverted back to the phone call. "What're we going to do? We haven't even found the deed to the Mystery Shack yet!" Soos turned around midst his pacing and immediately spotted Melody standing in the room with her arms crossed. His heart dropped upon the sight of her and he dropped his phone on the floor in surprise.

Ryland and Wendy looked back and forth between the two awkwardly, neither of them sure what to do or how to react. They suddenly decided to stand still with straight postures as if they were cadets and Melody was their general.

Soos giggled awkwardly. "H-hi, honey. Um, how'd you get back in?"

"Soos, I live here," Melody said calmly, although, with a hint of irritation in her voice. "There's an emergency key to the house, you know."

"Not to be disrespectful, Melody," Ryland began. "But why'd it take you until now to get back inside?"

Melody thought about the question for a moment. "Alright, I admit, I forgot where the emergency key was and I had to find it," she admitted. "But that's beside the point. Soos, what's this about a deed?"

Soos gulped nervously. "Babe, please don't be mad, but there's a deed to the Mystery Shack that Stan had given me that could save us from getting foreclosed because it'll make us the official owners of the Shack. The problem is...I lost it and I don't know where it is. I'm so sorry."

"And what?" Melody asked. "Someone from the bank is coming right now to foreclose us?"

"That's what Mabel says," Soos says as he picked up his phone from the floor. "She says that if he puts up the foreclosure sign, there's nothing we can do about it."

Melody sighed, still maintaining her calm demeanor. She glanced over at Wendy and Ryland, who still stood loyally. "You think you two can help me distract this guy when he arrives?"

"Um, sure," Wendy said, as Ryland nodded in agreement.

"Good," Melody nodded, pointing into the gift shop. "Meet me in the gift shop."

Wendy and Ryland rushed through the museum curtains back into the gift shop. Ryland, however, stuck his head back into the museum to watch what was about to happen. However, Wendy grabbed his arm and pulled him away, leaving Melody and Soos alone in the museum.

Soos looked over at Melody, who had her arms crossed and gave him a glare that said she demanded answers.

"Melody, I'm sorry I never told you about the deed," Soos began, looking down with a guilty expression. "I know I should've told you, but I wanted to handle things on my own for once to prove to you that I'm capable of fixing things for us. But as you can see, I've done nothing but prove that I'm just an oaf who can't keep track of a simple piece of paper."

"Aw, Soos," Melody said as she walked over to Soos and kissed him on the cheek, which he wasn't expecting at that moment.

"You're not mad?" Soos asked.

Melody gave an unsure expression at first. "Well, I'm a little irked that you kept this from me, but your intentions were sweet," she said with a smile. "Soos, we've been running this business together for almost four years. We've been together for just a little longer. After everything we've been through, I figured there was nothing else we needed to prove to one another."

"It's just that I feel like you do most of the heavy-lifting around here and I just wanted to take some of the weight off your shoulders for once," Soos explained.

"And it's sweet how you wanted to do that, but the truth is, you don't  _need_ to," Melody told him as she placed her arm around him. "In my eyes, we've always been a team. You're the one selling these customers and I'm the one handling finances. Without either of us, there's a major piece of this business missing. And so neither of us should ever have to face these sorts of problems alone."

"Yeah," Soos said with a warm smile. "I guess not."

"So you promise you won't hide anymore important secrets regarding the business to one another?" Melody asked.

"Well, this wasn't so much a secret, but more me forgetting we had a deed and where I put it…" Soos clarified, scratching the back of his head. "But yeah, I promise."

"Good," Melody said. She then rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly as she slowly walked back toward the gift shop. "And I know I just went on about how it should be us against these problems, but I'm really gonna need you to find that deed on your own within the next couple of minutes while I try to come up with a way to screw this banker over before he places that sign with Wendy and Ryland," she said as she stood within the gift shop, only her head popping through the curtains. "But I love you, and I believe in you!"

Soos was left alone in the museum silent, staring as the curtains dropped and blocked his view of her and the others. He then smiled dreamily.

"Man, what a woman," he said in a dreamy manner.

* * *

Mr. Nessman drove in his car to a red light before stopping. He glanced around the interior of the car before catching a glimpse of his face in the rearview mirror. He brought himself up and looked in the mirror. He opened his mouth and licked the front of his teeth. He clenched his teeth and gave an exaggerated, suave smile.

All of the sudden, he studied his rearview mirror and looked at the driver in a pickup truck behind him. While he noticed the driver himself appeared really tough and bulky, what caught his eye was the teens leaning over from the back of the pickup. Upon looking more closely, he immediately noticed how the teens were actually Dipper and Mabel. His eyes bulged upon the realization that they had escaped and somehow caught up to be right behind him.

He saw Mabel lean over outward on the driver's side of the vehicle and smile and wave at him before making an inappropriate hand gesture at him, which she probably wouldn't have done had there been more drivers on the same street to witness it. He gritted his teeth together angrily.

"Now that's not cool," he sputtered through his clenched teeth.

The light turned green and he began driving normally, turning a corner. The Pines followed, but they were not in the middle of some big chase sequence, as they were in the middle of town and drawing attention wouldn't be the brightest idea. Nessman knew he was being tailgated, however, and figured he needed to find a way to throw them off on his way to the Shack.

Dipper and Mabel focused on Nessman closely as they stood in the back of the truck, while Gideon watched from Ghost-Eyes' shoulders. Despite how much taller he had gotten in four years, he was still considered shorter than most and still needed help in elevation.

The twins then noticed that Nessman had taken an odd turn.

"Where's he going?" Mabel asked. "That's not the way to the Mystery Shack."

Dipper knew what he was doing. "He's trying to throw us off," he told her, eyes narrowing.

"How can you be so sure?" Gideon asked.

"Because the Mystery Shack was an obvious left turn and he took a right," Dipper explained. "There's literally no reason for him to take a right," he continued as he looked over to give Mabel an annoyed glare. "...and we already know that we had gotten his attention..."

"Hey, it would've been a missed opportunity if I hadn't done it," Mabel defended her use of giving Nessman a crude hand gesture.

Dipper facepalmed in response. "Whatever. We just need to stay on Nessman. We can't lose him."

"Why don't we just go to the Shack and wait there?" Mabel suggested. "He won't put up the sign if we're there waiting for him."

"And how long do we plan on doing waiting?" he asked her.

"I don't know? Until tonight?" she suggested. "He'll probably give up after like a day."

"I'm not sure that's the case for this guy, Mabel," he said. "He seems really driven on shutting us down. Like this has been a plan of his for awhile now."

"Oh, I wouldn't be surprised," Gideon said, chiming in. "When he first made the offer to me for the article to be written, he came in prepared with everything. He had the money, he had the pictures, heck, he even told me what to put in the article specifically. And as one with a history of evil plans, I got a familiar sense of those old schemes coming from him."

"Well, this scheme isn't gonna work," Dipper said confidently. "Nessman's the only one going down today, not us. Not the Shack."

"GIDEON!" Killbone exclaimed in an angered tone from the driver's seat. "I'm getting impatient driving around in circles! How much further must I tailgate this piece of trash before I wipe him off the map?"

"Uhhh...no!" Gideon exclaimed. He hopped off of Ghost-Eyes' shoulders and walked over to the side to call out to Killbone. "Killbone, we're not ramming into anyone! We're just following him!"

"WHAT?!" Killbone questioned angrily. "FOLLOWING HIM?! FOR WHAT?! ISN'T THIS THE BAD GUY?! I TAKE BAD GUYS OUT! I DON'T FOLLOW THEM!"

"Calm down, Killbone!" Gideon pleaded with a forced smile through his panicking. "Remember what we learned in prison? There's nothing greater than the power of…?"

Killbone's face reddened as he held his breath, trying to contain his anger. " _DEATH!_ "

Killbone stomped on the gas pedal as he drove behind Nessman. His pickup gained speed quickly as he caught up to Nessman's car. Dipper, Mabel, Gideon, and Ghost-Eyes all fell back in the back of the truck due to the sudden gain in speed.

"NO KILLBONE!" Gideon shouted in panic. "IT'S FRIENDSHIP! FRIENDSHIP, KILLBONE!  _FRIENDSHIP!_ "

Killbone didn't pay attention to Gideon and was too focused on ramming his car into Nessman's. Nessman himself then looked back at his rearview mirror to see the speeding car behind him and smiled. As the truck got closer and closer to his car, he made a sudden turn to the left, while Killbone continued to speed straight forward. After losing Nessman's trail, they began to draw closer and closer to a forest instead. This appeared to catch Killbone's attention and he stomped on the brakes.

"KILLBONE!" Gideon tried to call out to.

While the brakes managed to slow down the truck a bit, it didn't stop them from entering the forest and crashing straight into a large tree. The front of the truck took most of the collision, allowing Dipper, Mabel, Gideon, and Ghost-Eyes to stay in the back of the truck mostly unscathed, though still not unharmed. They all got up and groaned in pain caused by the overall impact of the crash.

Gideon immediately became frantic once he realized Killbone was still in the front. "Oh my gosh! Killbone!" He hopped out of the back and ran up to the driver's seat, to see Killbone's head lying on the airbag. "Killbone! Are you okay?!"

Killbone blinked his eyes a few times as he brought his head up from the airbag. "I'm sorry, Lil' Gideon," he said with a look of guilt. "I guess I forgot all about friendship."

"It's okay, Killbone," Gideon said with a tender smile. "You tried and that's all that matters."

Killbone smiled back at him, while Dipper, Mabel, and Ghost-Eyes jumped out from the back of the crashed pickup truck. Dipper looked around and saw they didn't crash too far into the forest, seeing the street only a few yards ahead of them. They were in a particularly uncrowded part of town as well, meaning no one really paid much attention to their crash, which would've made for a much worse scenario had their crash truly been a greater issue. Luckily, everyone survived the crash. Unfortunately, Nessman was nowhere in sight.

"Damn! Nessman got away!" Dipper exclaimed as he kicked a lone rock on the ground out of frustration.

"And there's no way we're going to get this truck going again," Gideon added as he observed the truck's damages.

"Great! There's no way we're going to catch up now!" Mabel exclaimed defeatedly.

"Don't worry!" Ghost-Eyes assured. "I can take emergency precautions!"

"Really? You've come prepared for this?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Of course!" Ghost-Eyes confirmed. "Watch!"

* * *

On the corner of the street beside a carwash, Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland stood beside their police car. They examined it admiringly.

"Lookee there, Durly," Blubs told him, wrapping an arm around him. "Ain't that the cleanest car you've ever seen? Tell me you ain't seen anything as clean as that car right there."

"Gosh, it sure is clean," Durland agreed.

"It sure is," Blubs nodded. "You'd have to be a fool not to wanna drive something as clean as that."

"A fool, indeed," Durland nodded.

"I'm gonna be honest, I'd even let a criminal drive it," Blubs added. "This car is too clean to deny a criminal."

"Oh, I agree, Blubs," Durland said. "Can't deny no one a car as clean as that."

Ghost-Eyes casually walked up to them. "Mind if I borrow this car from you two?"

Blubs and Durland stared at him silently for a moment. "Not at all, mista!" Blubs said with a smile as he tossed him the keys to the car.

"Thanks!" Ghost-Eyes said with a smile. He then used his elbow to shatter the window glass and stick his hand inside to unlock the car door, which shocked Blubs and Durland. He started up the car with the keys and looked up at their shocked expressions. "Sorry, I'm actually stealing this from you." He then shut the car door and looked over to the side. "C'mon guys! I got us a ride!"

Dipper, Mabel, and Gideon quickly ran over to the car. Gideon got into the passenger seat while the twins got in the back.

"Wait, so how is stealing a car an emergency precaution?" Dipper asked.

"It isn't," Ghost-Eyes said. "The precaution is me being prepared to convince anyone to hand me over whatever I ask from them. Why do you think I robbed banks?"

"Good point," Mabel said, despite Dipper's look of disagreement. "Now drive!"

Ghost-Eyes stepped on the gas and began driving down the street and around the corner, sending them on their way to the Mystery Shack. Blubs and Durland stood back on the corner in pure shock.

"Did we just let a criminal steal our car?" Durland asked, visibly confused.

"Yep," Blubs nodded.

"And are we a pair of idiots for just standing here and doing nothing about it?" Durland asked.

"Maybe. But ya know what?" Blubs asked with a smile as he put his arm around Durland again. "What matters is that we're a  _pair_  of idiots."

"You're right," Durland nodded with a smile as he looked back at Blubs dreamily. "Because two pairs are better than one."

"Two pairs?" Blubs asked, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean two pairs?"

"I don't know. I forgot the saying," Durland admitted.

Blubs stared at Durland blankly for a moment without a means of replying. He then smiled. "Hey, me too!"

The two burst out laughing as they put their arms around one another. Once their laughter died down, they just stared into each other's eyes dreamily.

"Hello?! Lil' Gideon?! Anyone?!" Killbone called out from the driver's seat of the crashed truck in the forest, not too far from the corner where the two cops stood. The two didn't react to the cries for help and simply continued to stare at one another as if they heard nothing.

* * *

Nessman continued driving until he saw the sign for the Mystery Shack. His eyes bulged and he smiled as he pulled into the main lot. He drove up to the front of the Shack and parked. As he got out of his car, he glanced around, ensuring he was in the clear from the twins.

He walked to the back of his car and opened his trunk, where the foreclosure sign was kept. He had pieces of wire and pieces to attach the sign to the white post that he had brought along to plant the sign into the ground. He began to assemble the pieces together in the back of his vehicle.

"Hello there!"

The voice startled Nessman, causing him to quickly glance around at his surroundings in fear. He quickly spotted Melody, who was dressed up in Soos' Mr. Mystery outfit. Behind her were Wendy and Ryland, both wearing question mark tees over their normal outfits. They all stood smiling brightly at the banker as if they had no idea who he was.

"Welcome to the Mystery Shack!" Melody greeted. "The world's most mysterious tourist attraction!"

Wendy pitched in. "We saw you pulled up and were wondering if we could interest you in one of our famous mystery tours!"

"Really? A tour?" Ryland whispered over to her. "But the place is a mess, remember?"

"Ryland, I swear..." Wendy threatened back in an irritated whisper.

"Oh right. My bad," Ryland apologized, immediately realizing his mistake.

" _Ahem_ ," Melody cleared her throat, grabbing the attention of the two as she walked beside Nessman and placed her hand on his back to begin leading him to the Shack and away from his car. "Anyways, we feel as though you'd be very interested in what we have to offer here. Just one tour can absolutely blow your-"

"Thanks," Nessman interrupted, pushing Melody's arm away. "But I didn't come for a 'tour'. I have more important matters at hand here."

He took a step back toward his car until he was stopped by Ryland standing in front of him. "More important than one of our mystery moisturizers?" He held up a bottle of moisturizer with a label reading 'MYSTERY MOISTURIZER - Totally moisturizer that is mysterious'.

"Yes!" Nessman said, walking past Ryland dismissively. "There are far more important things then...wait, moisturizer?"

" _Mystery_  moisturizer," Ryland clarified.

"What's so mysterious about it?" Nessman asked, raising an eyebrow in suspicion.

"Better question- what interests you about our mystery moisturizer?" Ryland asked. "Because you wouldn't be curious if there was some sort of interest."

"Well, I mean..." Nessman began, thinking about how to answer. "You see, I work in an office all day and all I do is sit around filling out paperwork. And you wouldn't believe how dry your hands get! And even with my job and the money I make, it's hard to find a decent moisturizer that actually, you know, moisturizes."

"Well, I think I found your solution right here," Ryland told him, gesturing for Nessman to hold his hands out to receive some of the moisturizer.

Nessman stuck out his hands for brief second before retracting them and looking at Ryland with a skeptical look on his face. "Wait, you never said what made it mysterious."

"It wouldn't be such a mystery if we told you, would it?" Wendy chimed in, grinning.

Nessman thought about the answer before settling on sticking his hands forward. Ryland leaned forward and squeezed some moisturizer from the bottle onto Nessman's hands.

"Voilà," Ryland told him.

Nessman began rubbing his hands together and his eyes bulged upon feeling the sensation. He looked down at his hands and smiled. "Say, that's pretty neat. I can feel my hands getting softer by the minute."

"It gets even better over time once it really settles in," Wendy said.

"That's right," Melody said, pitching in. "Here at the Mystery Shack, we not only have the finest attractions but the finest merchandise and products. No other tourist stop compares! You're quite lucky to be experiencing the effects of such a product for  _free_."

Nessman kept rubbing his hands together happily. "I certainly do feel quite lucky."

All of the sudden, there was loud screech from a car entering the lot of the Shack. Everyone turned their heads to see a police car drive in. Nessman spotted the driver and immediately recognized Ghost-Eyes and Gideon, and even caught a brief glimpse of Dipper and Mabel in the back. His senses were then brought back to him and he realized that he was being distracted.

"What am I doing?" he asked aloud. "I have a job to do! You three were trying to distract me!"

"Way to figure it out, Sherlock," Wendy chuckled.

"You  _knew_ I was coming!" Nessman realized as he took a few steps backward to the back of his car again.

"Yeah, and you're not taking the Mystery Shack away from us," Melody said as she took off her eyepatch and narrowed her eyes at Nessman. She, along with Wendy and Ryland, began to slowly approach Nessman threateningly.

Nessman used both of his hands to pull out the foreclosure sign from his trunk and hold it out in front of him defensively. "This sign says otherwise!"

Ghost-Eyes finally parked his car in a close enough spot to the ongoing commotion. Everyone in the car immediately stepped out and began to make their way towards the others.

"GUYS!" Mabel called out to the others as she began to run up to them. Melody, Wendy, and Ryland all looked in her direction.

"Don't let him plant that sign!" Dipper called out as he ran, pointing at Nessman's sign.

"Too late!" Nessman exclaimed as he raised the sign in the air, preparing to plant it into the ground. "You all have wasted enough of my time! It's time to end your little Mystery Shack once and for a-!"

" _AHEM!_ "

Everyone's heads turned to see Soos standing outside by the door of the Shack. He casually walked up to Nessman, who was still holding the sign in the air.

"Sorry to interrupt, dudes," Soos began, glancing around apologetically at everyone. He then turned toward Nessman and presented a paper to him. "But I feel like I needed to share this with you."

Nessman stared at the paper, which read '618 Gopher Road DEED'. He recognized this was the official deed to the Mystery Shack and looked up at Soos.

"The deed!" Mabel exclaimed excitedly.

"Honey, you found it!" Melody said, running up to wrap her arms around Soos' in a celebratory embrace.

"Heh, yeah. Turns out I was right about my first guess," Soos said, glancing at Dipper and Mabel. "I was watching TV the last time I had it."

"But I thought we already searched the whole living room?" Wendy asked him.

"The whole living room except for underneath the seat cushion," Soos explained. "The thing was laying right there when I pulled it back. Also a bag of Ghost Chips. Would've given them a try if I wasn't in such a rush, but it can wait until later."

"Well, you were just in time, it looks like," Dipper said. "Now Nessman here can't foreclose us!"

Nessman looked over at him and burst out laughing. "Why? Because of the deed to the Mystery Shack?" Nessman laughed. "How's that supposed to help you? Stanford already owned the Shack. I can still bring you down!"

"Stanford?" Soos questioned, raising an eyebrow. "Uhh, hate to break it to you, dude. But the name's not Stanford."

Nessman stared at Soos blankly for a moment, soon his calm face devolving into one of horror. "What?"

"I don't know if you've heard, but I'm a Soos," Soos clarified. "The former owner of the Shack was Stanford. Or his brother, Stanley. I can't remember. The name thing is still kinda confusing to me."

"The point is- we never had official ownership of the Shack until now," Melody jumped in, grabbing the deed from Soos.

"Yeah, and because of the 'Finders Keepers' law, since Soos holds the physical deed to the property, he now owns the Shack. He's no longer under Stan's name, which is the name all your reasons for foreclosing us were under," Dipper explained to Nessman with a grin of victory.

"No. That's not possible!" Nessman said in denial as his skin paled with the growing feeling of defeat. He then tried to pull his hands away from the sign but found that they were actually stuck to it. Despite how hard he tried to pull, his hands stayed attached to the post. "GAH! I can't move my hands!"

"Oh yeah, that mystery moisturizer that we gave you was actually an experimental super glue," Wendy revealed. "Something that we discovered in the closet that Stanford designed. Apparently, it uses a chemical that makes your skin softer, but makes the glue even stickier."

"What?!" Nessman cried out in shock. He continued to try to pull his hands from the sign but to no avail.

"Wooooo-we! That's quite the sticky situation, I must say," Gideon joked with a grin.

"Gideon! You little traitor!" Nessman said as he pointed the sign toward him offensively. Gideon fell on his back and raised his hands up in defense.

"Don't worry, Lil' Gideon!" Ghost-Eyes exclaimed as he ran up to Nessman and violently pushed him to the ground. Nessman attempted to stand back up but found the task onerous due to his hands being stuck to the sign. He lied on the ground and rolled his eyes over to look at Gideon.

"Gideon, we had a deal! Why'd you tell them about me?!" Nessman asked as he continued to struggle to get off the ground.

"Well if there's anything I've learned from my experience with the Pines, it's that they're far more intimidating than you'll ever be," Gideon said as he stood back up over him. "And the job I had done for you was wrong! I've realized it was selfish of me to choose to work for you. I shouldn't have ever done anything to harm them, and so I'm making it up to them by standing up to you!"

"You'll pay for this, Gideon!" Nessman shouted angrily. He eyeballed everyone else. "All of you will! You think you've seen the last of me?"

"God, I hope so," Mabel said with a light chuckle. "You're a lot more pathetic than most of our other villains. I mean even Gideon was better at being evil than you are. I mean, just let that sink in for a moment. A child was a better villain than you."

"Ha, yeah!" Gideon agreed, smirking. "Come to think of it, I don't remember why I ever thought you were scary! You really are pathetic!"

Everybody besides Nessman suddenly burst out laughing, while Nessman ignored them and continued to struggle to pull his hands away from the sign while lying down, rolling back and forth. He sat up on his bottom for a brief second before pulling himself and falling back on the ground, angrily growling in response.

Mabel calmed down a bit from her laughter and looked over at Dipper with a slight look of concern. "We're not taking this too far, are we?"

"The dude paid someone off to ruin our business, kept us locked up in chairs when we confronted him and came here to shut down the Shack before it was even time to do so," Dipper summed up for her. "I think this is a warranted revenge."

Gideon wiped a tear from his eye following his laughter. "Alright, that's enough fun. C'mon, Ghost-Eyes. Let's get this man outta here."

Ghost-Eyes picked up Nessman and followed Gideon over to their police car. Nessman looked fearful for a second. "Wait, where are you taking me?" he asked. "You're not gonna kill me, are you?"

"Gosh, no! NO!" Gideon assured, greatly unsettled by the idea. "Who do you think we are? No, we're just gonna drop you back at the bank and let them deal with you instead."

"By the way, the glue will wear off in about five to six hours!" Ryland called out. "So, I don't know. Just watch TV or something until then."

"And I'm ninety percent sure that the glue bonds you to whatever you're stuck to! If you try to get the sign torn off, you're probably gonna lose your arms!" Wendy added. "So yeah, just don't do that and just wait for it to wear off!"

Nessman groaned miserably as Ghost-Eyes shoved him into the back of the police car, sign still attached to his hands. He slammed the door shut and got into the driver's seat, while Gideon got in the passenger seat. The two waved at everyone else as they began to drive off, and they waved back in return. Nessman dejectedly looked up and out the window to see the Pines and everyone else waving. He particularly eyeballed Dipper and Mabel and narrowed his eyes at the sight of them.

"Well played, Pines," Nessman mumbled to himself. "Well played."

* * *

Two days passed, and the day generally seemed like any other normal weekday. The Mystery Shack was all cleaned up and it was the first day back open since the Nessman encounter, and business was thriving. Soos had just finished up a tour and several customers lined up at the register to purchase merchandise from the gift shop. Dipper and Mabel had sat in the corner, along with Waddles, watching Wendy and Ryland handling all the sales.

"Man, the place seems to have really picked up today," Dipper acknowledged as he looked at the long line of customers. "I don't remember the place having these many customers last time."

"Yeah, this is more in line with the type of business Stan was earning when he was running it," Mabel added. "The Shack hasn't been this packed in the time we've been here since returning."

"That's cause of yesterday's paper, dudes," Soos said as he walked over to the two with yesterday's edition of the Gravity Falls Gossiper, pointing out a particular article.

"'Mystery Shack NOT a Hack!'," Mabel read aloud, taking the paper off of Soos' hands.

"Looks like Gideon wrote an article retracting the claims originally made against the Shack," Dipper said as he read through the article. Gideon seemed to address every point that Nessman had wanted him to make in his original article that started the Shack's downfall. This new article completely reversed those original claims.

"And as you can see, it seems to be taking effect," Melody said, walking over to the three. She held out a printing calculator in her hands and performed various calculations. "And I already checked the amount of merch purchased by the number of customers we've obtained today. If we manage the same amount of performance today for the next week or so, then we'll have enough to pay off the month's mortgage  _and_ the late fee we obtained!"

"That's great!" Soos exclaimed excitedly as he placed his arm around her. "Looks like we're back in business!"

"Gotta say, Gideon really did pull through for us," Mabel admitted. She gave an unsettled look on her face. "That feels really weird to say."

"It does, but it's true," Dipper nodded. "We owe a fair amount of this to him."

"Gosh," Gideon himself chimed in, surprising the four with his sudden and unexpected presence. "Y'all are making me blush. I appreciate the words. Really, I do!"

"Gideon? What are you doing here?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Admiring what the effects of my article have done for y'all," he replied, turning to looking at the long line of customers. "It really has done some good, hasn't it?" He turned back to the twins. "Although, I'd appreciate if we could converse a bit more in private outside."

Dipper and Mabel glanced at one another with skeptical looks but gave in. "Alright then," Dipper settled as he and Mabel began to follow him outside onto the porch of the gift shop.

Gideon shut the door behind them and rubbed his hands together excitedly. "So in my own time since we last met, I've done my own research on our good friend Mr. Nessman and I've managed to dig up some interesting details on him," he began as his excitement died down to a more serious tone. "It turns out ol' Biz's plan to foreclose your Mystery Shack wasn't actually his own idea."

"What do you mean?" Mabel asked, confused. "He said he wanted to tear down the Shack so that he could buy out the land for personal business ventures."

"Sure, he may have said that," Gideon said. "But those aren't  _his_ personal business ventures. He's actually working for a much higher class. A rich family is trying to pay off their debt by hiring him to buy off expensive lands for them to expand business and generate a greater source of revenue. As it turns out, Nessman was just another pawn in the game. He wasn't the man who wanted to take down the Shack after all."

"What?!" Dipper said, utterly shocked that they still haven't tracked down the man truly responsible for their latest misfortune. "So who's the real guy?"

"I'm not sure. And believe me, I've done a lot of research," Gideon assured. "But there doesn't seem to be any notable connections I can find tied to Nessman. Whoever's in debt wants to make sure no one finds out their identity. Especially since they're really rich. I don't think we'll find out who they are anytime soon."

"So there's someone else out there that has a target on us," Dipper thought aloud. "And they're still out there."

"Maybe we should interrogate Nessman about them," Mabel suggested.

"I'm not sure about that," Gideon said with concern. "At least, not now. I'm publishing an article specifically on Nessman for tomorrow's issue of the Gossiper that exposes him using a collection of other info I've gathered on him. If the effects on the Shack are any indication of the reaction he's expect to receive, then he'll be under a lot of heat. It's probably for the best that we stay away from our associated ties with him for the time being."

"I guess," Dipper reluctantly agreed as he turned to Mabel. "But I think it's safe to say that we have our first big mystery on our hands."

"I guess so," Mabel nodded.

"And I'm allowed to help out, right?" Gideon asked. He caught the twins' looks of skepticism toward him and frowned. "C'mon! After all that I've done for y'all these past few days?!"

Dipper sighed. "I guess you've proven us wrong in the sense that  _maybe_ you  _can_ change. You still got a few ways to go. But you've earned our respect and to a slight extent, our trust. But we're impressed. If you can keep going down this current road without any signs of turning back, I think we can consider you a true ally."

"Also, if you come to terms with the fact that I am never going out with you. EVER!" Mabel added, crossing her arms in disgust.

"Done!" Gideon exclaimed happily. "And I promise that you won't see me turn back. I swear, I'm a new man!"

Dipper and Mabel glanced at one another again before looking back at him. "Alright. Well as it is right now,  _I guess_  you can help us out with this," Dipper told him.

" _WOOOOO-WE!_ " Gideon cheered happily before suddenly hugging the two, catching the two completely off guard. "Thank you! I promise I'll never let y'all down again!"

"Alright, but we didn't agree to hugging," Mabel said, attempting to pull away.

"Just let him have this one, Mabel," Dipper told her as he lightly hugged Gideon back. "He's earned this one."

Mabel sighed and lightly placed her arm around Gideon as well, solidifying the group hug between the three. After a few seconds, she heard a faint sniffing sound.

"I'm pulling away if you don't stop sniffing my hair, Gideon," Mabel said in an annoyed tone.

"Sorry!" Gideon replied as he stopped sniffing as asked.

* * *

"I know, sir," Mr. Nessman spoke into his phone as he paced around his bank office. "I tried, sir. But they're returned."

He walked up to his former window, which had been previously broken when Ghost-Eyes jumped out with Dipper, Mabel, and Gideon on his shoulders. It had since been replaced with a bunch of wooden boards that did not blend in with the rest of the room.

"...Dipper and Mabel Pines, sir. They've come back to Gravity Falls," Nessman told the person on the other side of the call. "If it wasn't for them, I would have succeeded in getting the land for you."

* * *

"Any competent banker of mine would know how to handle a pair of mere teenagers!" the man scolded. "And obviously you're not competent enough. You're fired, Biz."

A door opened behind the man and a blonde teenage girl entered the house. She took off her earphones and began to wrap them up around her phone as she passed by him. "I'm home, dad."

"Not now, Pacifica!" Preston Northwest exclaimed, covering the microphone on his cell phone. "I'm on the phone!"

Pacifica rolled her eyes as she walked right past him and began walking up the stairs, turning the corner into her room and shutting the door behind her.

"But Mr. Northwest…" Mr. Nessman's voice emerged from the speakerphone.

"Don't you 'but Mr. Northwest' me!" Preston upbraided, violently smashing his fist against the wall in anger. "This was my one chance at obtaining that land and being able to repay my...debts...and you've ruined it for me! You're fired and you best never contact me again!" Preston looked around at his surroundings in the room, ensuring he was alone at the moment. "And I hope you still remember the gag order you've signed," he quietly informed Nessman in a serious tone. "I recommend never speaking of any of this to anyone if you know what's good for you."

He hung up the phone and placed it down on the table beside him. He placed his hands on his face and sighed loudly, making his way over to a large window. He stared outside for a moment in silence until Priscilla walked into the room behind him and stepped up beside him.

"So what're we going to do now?" she asked him with a concerned look on her face.

"Back to the drawing board, my dear," he told her as he wrapped his arms around his back in a formal matter. "Back to the drawing board."

"So what should we do about next month's revival festival?" she asked him. "Should I cancel the invites? You know we used to send these over a month in advance before. Are we at risk?"

"No," Preston assured her, placing his hands upon her shoulders in a comforting matter to settle her down from her visibly stressed look. "This is only a setback. Trust me, there will be other ways." He took his hands off her shoulders and walked back toward the window and stared outside. "Send the invites for the revival. It's time for the world to know that the Northwest family is back on the map."

From their new mansion, he stared across the valley where their former mansion sat, which now belonged to the McGuckets. Their new mansion was slightly smaller in size compared to their previous one, but he wasn't going to let a little size difference get the best of him. McGucket may have been rich, but his name wasn't nearly as big as theirs once was. By next month, he planned for things to be just like how they used to be. That by the time the revival arrives, it'll be as if they had never lost their fortune. It'll be as if they had never left.

And they'll still be the best of the best.

* * *

_June 9th, 2016_

_Just thought I'd jot this down real quick._

_It's been a pretty busy day here at the Mystery Shack thanks to Gideon and him fixing the reputation of the Shack in the Gravity Falls Gossiper. He had actually come over today to tell us that the whole plan of foreclosing the Shack for business ventures wasn't the idea of Biz Nessman. In fact, Biz was actually hired by someone with a much higher class than he was. Biz Nessman was just another pawn, the same way Gideon was his pawn. The way Gideon described it, this person is trying to repay his debt and is keeping this a secret._

_Gideon also told us to lay low for a bit until the heat wears off Nessman when he publishes his article on him tomorrow. Until then, I'm gonna be thinking about who this person is. This is the first big mystery of the summer and we have to take this seriously. If we've been targeted once, we could be targeted again._

_My issue is that we were a target of this person. But I know that in due time, we'll find this person and who they are. And we'll make sure they receive the payback that they deserve._

* * *

 

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	12. The Arctic Stan: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before making their trip back to Gravity Falls, Stan and Ford take on a mountain in the Arctic that has been tracked to have increasing traces of anomalous activity.

The sun above the Arctic Ocean was blocked off by the vast amount of thick clouds from the upcoming blizzard. Despite the distance of the blizzard, plenty of snow traveled downwards with the assistance of the incoming high-speed winds. The seas were rough and the waves violently crashed against one another.

Underneath the worsening storm was the Stan o' War II, which was rushing fast among the brutal seas. Stanford Pines stood at the wheel of the boat with an actively serious look on his face, dedicating all his focus on what was ahead of him. The nearing storm was clearly interfering with his ability to see clearly and the increasing winds caused him to struggle with keeping the ship steered straight.

A sudden loud roaring sound then grabbed his attention as he looked over to his left and gasped. The head of a giant creature emerged from the water right before his eyes. Several tentacles suddenly pulled out of the water as well and began to wrap around the boat, suddenly stopping it and causing Ford to fall back on the deck. He stood up and looked back up at the creature, which had a bearing resemblance to that of a large kraken but had a very bright and colorful color scheme, mixed with plenty of strong reds, blues, and purples.

"STANLEY!" Ford yelled out to his brother through the roaring winds as he glanced over at the boat's cabin. "DID YOU FIND IT YET?!"

Inside the Stan o' War's cabin, Stanley Pines was on his knees frantically searching through a large wooden box full of various supplies. He knew that he hadn't found what Ford had requested him to find yet and was only getting more frustrated the more he searched.

"NO! I'M STILL LOOKING!" he shouted back toward the door outside.

"WHAT'S TAKING YOU SO LONG?!" Ford asked, growing impatient. He picked up a spear from the deck and threw it at the giant creature attacking them, piercing one of its tentacles. However, the sheer size of the monster made the spear look all the more ineffective, as it didn't even react either.

"YOU KNOW, NORMALLY I'M NOT THE KIND OF GUY TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THINGS BEING UNORGANIZED, BUT IF YOU HAD PUT THIS THING IN A BETTER SPOT, I WOULDN'T BE TAKING SO LONG TO FIND IT!" Stan yelled back frustratedly.

"If I survive this encounter, then I'll gladly reorganize later," Ford said more calmly as he tried to balance himself on the rocking boat. "But those chances are becoming slimmer the more you waste time COMPLAINING!"

Suddenly, one of the creature's large tentacles wrapped around Ford's waist and began slowly lifting it up. Ford began frantically trying to struggle out of its grasp.

"STANLEY! HURRY!" Ford called out desperately.

Stan kept searching through the box until he spotted something. He reached down and grabbed a pink box labeled 'Frooby Frebbles' and gasped. "Gotcha!"

He ran outside with the box of cereal and gasped upon seeing Ford in the creature's grasp, lifted in the air out of his reaching distance.

"Stanley!" Ford shouted down at him as he continued to struggle in the monster's tentacle. "Help!"

"I have the cereal!" Stan told him as he raised the box in his hand. "What do you want me to do with it?"

"Grab its attention with it!" Ford commanded him.

"What?!" Stan questioned, completely appalled by the suggestion. "You want me to distract a giant, bloodthirsty sea monster with a goddamn box of cereal?!"

"Just do it, Stanley!" Ford demanded, getting irritated by his brother's sudden questioning of his idea in the midst of the current stakes. "For God's sake, just trust me!"

Stan still gave him a look of skepticism but gave in to his order. He promptly ran up to the side of the boat and raised the box of cereal above his head for the monster to see.

"Hey ugly!" Stan called out to it causing the creature's eyes to glance over at him. "Tell me- what would you want more? This big ol' box of super sweet and delicious Frooby Frebbles, or the salty bitterness of my brother's sixty-year-old nerd brain?"

The colorful sea creature looked closely at the box of cereal in Stan's hands and appeared interested in it. It promptly released Ford from its tentacle and dropped him above the boat. He screamed briefly as he fell before landing flat on his backside. The fall wasn't extreme, but it was definitely high enough to be painful.

Stan looked down at Ford on the deck. "Well, that somehow worked," he said in surprise of the effectiveness of the plan.

The creature then moved closer to the boat and roared directly at Stan, who fell on his bottom in fear. He shook fearfully with the box of cereal still in his hands. Ford got up from the ground and swept himself clean.

Stan looked up at Ford. "Ford, what do we do now?"

Ford then aggressively swiped the box of cereal from Stan's hands and immediately threw it into the mouth of the creature. The creature ate it and backed up away slightly from the boat as it began to chew. All of the sudden, the creature began roaring violently, as if it was reacting to the cereal.

Stan stood up next to Ford, who walked up to the side of the boat to view the creature. Stan smiled at the sight of the presumably suffering creature. "Haha, nice one, Sixer. Placing a poison in the cereal so it would kill the monster. Smart plan considering neither of us eat that garbage."

"Oh, I didn't put any poison in it," Ford told him with a smug look on his face. "Those are normal Frooby Frebbles that we gave it."

"Oh, really?" Stan asked, raising an eyebrow. "So what, then? Is it like giving chocolate to dogs or something? Does the stuff just naturally kill it?"

"It's not suffering, Stanley," Ford told him.

The creature suddenly swam up to the boat again and stuck it's head out toward the two, which scared Stan, causing him to fall back on his rear again. However, Ford stood confidently in front of the creature. He placed his hand on its giant head and began petting it, smiling.

"That's a good girl," he said as he petted it, the creature making a faint noise reminiscent of a purr. "Now swim along now. We have locations to head toward and so do you," he said as he backed away from the creature, pointing off in the distance. On his command, the giant creature dove underwater and swam off away from the two, which created a few final large waves to send the boat rocking until it finally settled.

Ford gave a light chuckle as he watched the sea creature swim off into the distance. He then turned around to see Stan staring back at him with the most appalled expression he had ever seen. He looked as though mouth was literally about to drop straight off.

"What the hell?!" he questioned, utterly confused.

"What?" Ford asked innocently, shrugging his arms up.

"T-that! What was that?!" Stan asked, pointing off into the distance where the creature had swum off. "I thought we were going to kill that thing! Not domesticate it!"

"Oh please, Stanley," Ford brushed off with an eye roll. "The Snacken can't be domesticated. They just get ornery when they're hungry. They have a preference for sugary sweets rather than human flesh, so that's why I had ordered you to get the cereal. Once they're fed, they become nothing more than gentle giants- creatures to admire from afar with the eye."

"Really?" Stan asked, crossing his arms. "The Snacken? You totally came up with that, didn't you?"

"Yes, and to be completely honest, I'm far more proud of the name than I should be," Ford said with a smug smile as he walked back over to the wheel to steer the boat. "They are beautiful creatures, though. It's nice to see one again. Although, they look incredibly out of place here in contrast to the Colorful Creature dimension."

"So you have encountered those before too?" Stan asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, and unfortunately, with it being the fifteenth anomaly that I've previously seen in other dimensions that we've encountered within the last forty-eight hours means that my theory on this investigation is becoming even more probable," Ford said, his smug look on his face changing to a serious and concerned look. "The spike in weirdness in this area over the past couple of years could be the result of a multiversal leak."

"That sounds complicated so I'm going to assume that's a bad thing," Stan said.

"Well, they certainly aren't good things. Multiversal leaks are tears in a dimension that also sync up with every other dimension in the multiverse. Anything and anyone that makes contact with it can be sent to any random dimension," Ford explained. "Depending on how big the leak has gotten and what else has emerged from it, we could be in for something incredibly dangerous. And considering the levels were similar to the saucer back in Gravity Falls, then things are already looking bad for us."

"And yet here we are- on a boat in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, yet again, and heading toward what may as well be considered impending doom," Stan said, lacking hope for the situation they are bringing themselves into.

"Relax," Ford told him. "I've dealt with two of these things before in the past. A simple nuclear equation with the proper elements should be enough to close it up. The problem is dealing with whatever emerged from the leak." Ford pulled up his sleeve from his wrist, revealing a highly advanced wristwatch. He showed it to Stan. "In the event that things do get too out of hand for us to control, I have a backup plan prepared inside  _Meridian_."

"Of course. Meridian," Stan said, rolling his eyes at Ford's wristwatch. "Your all-mighty wristwatch that you've programmed to do anything except basic functions you'd expect to come with a futuristic wristwatch."

"I've told you a thousand times, Stanley. It's still a prototype," Ford said, irritated by Stan's mockery.

"But still, you've added so many out-there functions to that thing. The ability to detect nearby storms, the ability to tell wind direction. It shoots lasers. It has a built-in parachute. Flashlight. Blacklight," Stan listed until he grabbed ahold of Ford's wrist. "The ability to make  _toast_  on the spot."

He tapped a button on Ford's wristwatch, which made a few green laser lights that projected an image of a lone piece of toast. Then, the lasers merged together and began sculpting a three-dimensional model of the toast. Once finished, there was a flash of light that Stan and Ford shielded their eyes from. Upon looking back, they saw a fresh piece of toast lying on the deck.

Stan walked over to the toast and picked it up, holding it out to Ford for him to see. " _TOAST_ , Stanford!" He scolded. "You added the ability to make toast with a watch but you forget to add...oh, I don't know...a map? Or better yet, a teleportation function? You used to hang around Dipper a lot. Haven't you seen any of those sci-fi shows he watches? They always have a guy with a futuristic watch that has the ability to warp around anywhere. You couldn't even remember to add something like that, but you added a god damn toaster?!"

"I'm willing to accept my fault in forgetting to incorporate a map function into Meridian, but you must understand that a teleporter isn't nearly as easy to install into such a compact device as some sci-fi show may make it seem," Ford defended.

"Yeah, but...a freakin' toaster?!" Stan questioned, waving the crispy piece of bread in front of his brother's face.

Ford swiped the toast from Stan's hand and took a bite out of it daringly. "Easy to produce, prevents starvation no matter where we end up, and it's perfectly crisp by scientific means."

"Whatever," Stan said, rolling his eyes. "But as soon as we get back to Gravity Falls, you better finish that thing. You built a portal traveling to different dimensions over thirty years ago. A teleporter that only goes anywhere in the world sounds like it should be nothing by your standards."

"Except, the portal was made using resources obtained from an alien U.F.O.," Ford explained as he continued to munch on the piece of toast in his hand. "Look, Stanley, I already plan on installing the finishing touches and features on Meridian when we get back home. If it will make you happy, I'll check out the specifications for a functional teleporter feature and see what I can put together." He put the final piece of toast into his mouth and chewed. "But I won't make any promises."

"Uh-huh," Stanley said, brushing it off. "Speaking of which, you never told me about the deal with the U.F.O. Could you...errr...elaborate a bit more on that?"

Ford swallowed the remains of his toast and sighed. "I don't know. It's a long story."

"C'mon, I'm a patient guy," Stan insisted.

"Are you sure?" Ford asked, looking away from him to see what was ahead of the boat.

"Of course," Stan nodded with a smile.

"Well, then you can wait for me to tell you about it another time," Ford said as he pointed up ahead of the boat. "Because we're coming up on land."

Stan looked up ahead and saw that their boat was nearing a large plot of icy land. As the cold mist began to dissipate, the two could see a large snowy mountain plotted further inland.

"C'mon, let's prepare to anchor this thing," Ford said as he began walking to the front of the boat, leaving Stan behind at the wheel.

"Right," Stan agreed, looking somewhat annoyed. "Another time on that U.F.O. then…"

As the boat sailed closer to the edge of the island, Ford walked into the cabin and up to a lever on a control panel. Stan took control of the wheel and began to turn the boat steadily so it would align well with the edge. As the boat became reaching distance with the land, Ford pulled the lever down, which lowered the anchor. As it hit the bottom of the water, Ford walked out of the cabin and gave Stan a thumbs up. Stan then pulled the key from beside the steering wheel, shutting off the boat's engine.

Stan then ran up to a roll of rope in the corner of the deck. Ford jumped on the edge of the boat and then jumped over to the land. Stan threw the rope over to him, and he caught it. He then unrolled the rope and wrapped it around the bottom of a thick stone spike in the ground, tying a secure knot.

Stan then got up on the edge of the boat and leaped across the land, but his jump was a bit weaker than Ford's was. Luckily, Ford had quickly grabbed a hold of his hand as he jumped and pulled him up over the edge, preventing him from falling.

The fall had taken Stan by surprise, as he steadied himself back on his feet with Ford's help. He sighed. "I'm getting too old for all this jumping, Ford," Stan said, straightening his back up. "I can't wait to just go home and see the kids again."

"Don't worry, Stanley," Ford said with a chuckle, patting him on the back. "We're almost done."

The two smiled at one another before they looked forward at the mountain ahead of them. It was a good walk away, but it was one they had to take. They've come too far to stop now. It was now up to them to find out what was going on with the anomalies and figure out how to solve it. Once they had wrapped things up there, it was time to head home.

And that's a trip neither of them wanted to miss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to redwoodroots for doing wonderful fanart for this chapter.


	13. The Arctic Stan: Part 2

The blizzard seemed to get stronger every second. The snow hit harder and the winds got colder. Despite these harsh conditions, the Stan twins continued to trudge through the snow as they made their way over to the mountain of anomalies that Ford had initially detected, which was the main point of their trip in the first place.

Having been through several different dimensions, many of which were just parallel Earths, Ford knew he had been through far worse than a little cold weather. While he would prefer to be in warmer weather at that moment, he tolerated the current conditions. Stan, on the other hand, was shivering under all his layers, showing he wasn't quite as tolerant as Ford was.

"I don't know how you can put up with this weather, Ford," Stan said as he rubbed his hands together to gain the slightest bit of warmth from the friction. "This cold is honestly making a sunburn sound like heaven."

"You know that sunburns aren't suddenly unobtainable just because we're in cold weather, right?" Ford asked, raising an eyebrow at his brother.

"They aren't?" Stan asked, surprised. "How do I get one then? Do I have to take all my clothes off?"

"W-wha…?" Ford questioned, so put off by Stan's lack of common sense that he paused in the midst of their walk. "No, I highly suggest you keep all your clothes on for both of our sakes, please," he told him before they began walking toward the mountain again. "And besides, a sunburn isn't entirely dependent on how warm your skin is. It's more so based on how much sun you're exposed to. You could be naked and on the brink of hypothermia and you can still get a nasty sunburn."

"Alright, I suppose you probably would know best about that," Stan snickered through his shivering.

"Real funny, Stanley," Ford said sarcastically with an eye roll.

"Seriously though, I really need to take a break," Stan said. "This cold has numbed my feet and I think I'm gonna lose complete feeling to them at some point in the next six-point-five seconds."

"That's a ridiculously specific prediction," Ford said as he continued walking. "We only have half a mile left to go, so I'm sure you can hold on until-"

_SPLAT!_

Ford turned around and saw Stan lying face-down within the snow after falling.

"Wow, you weren't kidding," Ford said, slightly surprised by Stan's initial prediction.

"Told ya," Stan said, face muffled in the snow. He then raised his arm in the air. "Now, a little help?"

Ford sighed as he approached his brother and picked him off the frozen ground. Stan placed his left arm over Ford's neck, and Ford placed his own arm around Stan's back for support. Stan used his other arm to wipe the snow off his face and clothes.

"Appreciate it, bro," Stan said with a smirk.

"You're quite the character, Stanley," Ford said somewhat irritatedly as he began walking the two of them.

"Hold on," Stan said, looking forward into the distance, with Ford stopping at his command. Stan then pointed his arm forward. "Tell me- do you see something over there or is that just a flake of snow in my eye?"

Ford looked forward at where Stan was pointing. The snowy winds made it somewhat difficult to see far distances, so he couldn't spot anything right away. He adjusted his glasses and squinted. Eventually, he spotted a figure moving in the distance. The figure looked faintly like another man.

"It looks like...a person!" Ford said in surprise. He looked at the figure a bit more until he was able to make out better details, eventually able to verify that it was, indeed, another man dressed in winter clothing scouting out in the Arctic. "It is a person!"

"What?" Stan questioned in disbelief. "Someone's just as crazy as us to be out here in the middle of nowhere?"

"HELLO?" Ford called out to the man as he continued walking himself and Stan toward him. "HELLO! DON'T BE AFRAID, MISTER! WE ONLY WISH TO SPEAK WITH YOU!"

"Stanford, if I was alone in the middle of nowhere and someone called that out to me, I'd run like hell," Stan told him straight-forward.

"Well, what do you suggest? You know I still haven't gotten used to speaking to strangers in modern times," Ford reminded.

"Well, when we get back home, you should really consider seeing a therapist for the aftermath of thirty years in-between dimensions," Stan suggested.

Ford sighed but soon noticed the man in the distance actively making his way toward him. "Hey, he's coming toward us!"

"After what  _you_ called out to him?" Stan questioned. "Better have that wristwatch ready, Fordsy. This guy is already proving not to have the greatest understanding of common sense."

"You two should get along just fine, then," Ford jabbed.

The man soon reached them and stopped to pant and catch his breath. He appeared like an innocent middle-aged man who wore appropriate clothes for the snowy weather. He also equipped a green camouflage backpack. After a brief moment of catching his breath, he stood up straight and smiled at the twins.

"Howdy, strangers," the man said as he put his hand out to shake.

"Hello, good sir," Ford said as he shook the man's hand. "Surprised to see another human soul out here. Never would've imagined anyone else besides my brother and I coming out to such an obscure location."

"Yeah, I'm actually glad I ran into y'all," the man said. "Roaming around here in the cold all alone ain't exactly the most fun."

"Well, what are you doing all the way out here on your own anyway, if I may ask?" Ford asked politely.

"Oh, just looking around. Ya know. Doing research in the area. Investigating and such," the man answered.

"Ah, really?" Ford asked, intrigued. "My brother and I came up here to do a bit of investigating ourselves. We're kind of scientists."

"Well, he's the scientist, really," Stan jumped in, pointing at Ford. "I'm just his idiot brother that stupidly agreed to come along."

"Anyways…" Ford said, glaring at Stan. "We came here to investigate that mountain over there," he told the man, pointing over at the mountain behind him. "We heard of some increases in anomaly activity near it and we've come to check it out."

The man's eyes bulged. "Oh no, you don't want to explore that mountain."

"Why not?" Ford asked.

"It's too dangerous!" the man exclaimed warningly. "I just came back from that mountain and I encountered some horrific creatures! I mean, truly horrifying. I just had to get away from them all. I'm warning y'all...if you wanna live, don't go over to that mountain!"

Stan and Ford glanced at one another fearfully. Stan then looked back at the man with a thankful smile. "Welp, that's good enough for me. Thanks for the warning, mister. C'mon Sixer, let's call it 'mission complete' and head back to the Stan O' War."

"Except, it's not a 'mission complete'," Ford dismissed. He turned back to the man. "Look, we appreciate the warning, mister. But we've come too far to turn back now. It's our duty to handle whatever is happening in that mountain."

" _Our_  duty? You sure about that?" Stan asked, raising an eyebrow.

"If y'all wish to die, then I suppose I won't get in the way," the man said. "But I'm telling y'all now, you ain't gonna get very far. Those creatures are some of the scariest and most dangerous things I've ever seen. And believe me when I say I've seen a lot of scary things in my past."

"Well, mister, you're not the only one," Ford responded. He started to walk away with Stan. "Wherever you're going next, we wish you luck."

"Also wherever you're going, please do me a favor and just plant two random gravestones in the middle of nowhere with the names Stanley and Stanford Pines," Stan said, looking over his shoulder before facing forward again.

The man stared at the two oddly as they walked off toward the mountain. He then looked away to think for a moment before looking back at them.

"Hold up!" he called out to the two, causing them to turn around. "Y'all said your names were...Stanley and Stanford Pines?"

"Uh, yes, that's correct," Ford said. "They're not particularly well-known names if that's what you're getting at."

The man narrowed his eyes at them suspiciously. "No...not at all…" he whispered to himself.

Stan and Ford glanced at one another in confusion before looking back at the man. "Um, is there a problem, sir?"

The man shook his head violently and smiled innocently. "Uh, no! Y'all just carry on. I wish the both of ya luck up there!"

"Thank you, mister. Farewell!" Ford waved before turning himself and Stan back around and they continued to walk up the mountain. Unbeknownst to them, the man had continued to glare at the two with narrowed eyes.

"I don't trust that guy," Stan said. "Something about him gave me a bad vibe."

"I'm kind of with you," Ford admitted. "I thought he was alright until he started questioning our names." He then narrowed his eyes at Stan. "You just had to say our names aloud in that tombstone joke…"

"Well, if we're facing imminent death, I might as well embrace it, shouldn't I?" Stan defended.

"Why must you always exaggerate?" Ford questioned, getting annoyed by Stan's constant expectation of death. He stopped in his place as an idea hit him. "You know what? Let me ask him what he saw specifically so we have an idea of what we may be up against." He turned around and looked behind themselves. "Wait, mister! One last thing- what did y-?"

Ford cut himself off as the two of them looked around behind themselves and saw nothing. The man was gone. It hadn't been a minute since they parted ways and they had barely walked a few yards, but the man was nowhere in sight. It was as if he had just vanished.

"Where'd he go?" Ford asked.

"The man has places to be, I guess," Stan said.

"The fog is getting thicker," Ford noticed as the winds began to pick up. "Maybe he's too far in it that we can't see him anymore. The storm is picking up though, so I'm not gonna bother turning back. Let's just keep a good eye out on our surroundings on our way to the mountain."

Stan sighed. "I'm telling you, Sixer. I got a bad feeling about this."

"We'll be fine, Stanley," Ford assured as he continued walking them over there. "Trust me."

* * *

Nearly thirty minutes later, the two were still trudging through the thickening snow. Ford was getting noticeably tired of carrying Stan's arm over his neck and felt his own feet beginning to numb as well. They had basically reached the edge of the bottom of the mountain, but it was clear that they needed to take a break before both of them collapsed in the snow.

"Alright, I think we need to stop somewhere to rest," Ford said in a weak voice.

"Ya think?" Stan asked sarcastically, also in a weak voice. Despite having been mostly carried by his brother, his arm was beginning to sore and he was generally beginning to struggle to hold on.

Ford then noticed that around the edge of the mountain, there was a cavern. It appeared like a space viable for taking cover from the snow so they could warm up a bit.

"Look," Ford said, pointing the cave out to Stan. "There's a cave up ahead. We'll use that to shelter ourselves from the storm and rest for a bit."

They slowly made their way over to the cave entrance. Though every passing second they attempted to reach it, the winds felt colder and colder. The destination they were trying to reach was so close, but the weather made it feel so far.

However, they managed to reach it. It wasn't a particularly large cave but it had plenty of room to settle down. They walked inside deeper near the back of the cave to stay away from the cold air pouring in from the entrance leading outside. Ford then placed Stan on the ground against one of the walls of the cave for him to relax.

"Comfy?" Ford asked jokingly.

"Of course. Reminds me of a prison cell," Stan answered as he slumped himself against the stone wall. "Cold, rocky, and the same ol' depressing feeling of not wanting to be here."

"Well while you're reminiscing about your past, I'll focus on the future," Ford said as he began tapping on his wristwatch. "Meridian is detecting a bunch of different elements hidden in the walls of this cave, so I'm gonna start gathering them for sealing the multiversal leak."

Ford and started using Meridian's laser function to mine into one of the walls of the cave. Stan thought about Ford's words for a moment and his mind turned to another set of thoughts.

"Ya know, speaking of the future," Stan began, scratching the back of his head. "We've been going on nonstop adventures around the world for almost four years. When we're done here and we head back to Gravity Falls, we're finally gonna settle down from all that so we can spend time with the kids."

As Ford traced a small chunk in the wall with his laser, he looked back at Stan. "Yes, I'm more than aware of that at this point, Stanley. What's your point?"

"Alright, smart one," Stan said in response to Ford's tone of voice. "My question is- what's the plan?"

"Plan? What plan?" Ford asked.

"I mean, like, when the summer's over," Stan specified. "When the kids head back to Piedmont again. What're we doing then? Are we going adventuring again or what?"

Ford paused his laser for a moment to think about the question. "Probably not."

"Hmm...really?" Stan asked, thinking over his answer.

"Well, don't get more wrong, Stanley. I've enjoyed these past few years quite a bit," Ford clarified. "I only say probably not because...well, we're just getting too old for this kind of action." Ford's voice had some disappointment in it as if he was unpleased with the idea. "I mean, count the number of instances these past four years that our age and decaying natural abilities nearly got us killed."

Stan crossed his arms and thought about it. "There was the time with the Mexican bandits and the time with that Italian lady. That's, like, twice! That's not so bad!"

"I count fifteen times, Stanley," Ford corrected. "You're forgetting the time in Argentina…"

"Alright, I had warned you that my back wasn't good that morning," Stan defended.

"And the time in Canada…"

"Well, someone had told me that Canadians were the nicest people in the world!" Stan tried to defend again. "Clearly, that wasn't true when we went there."

"Just because the people are nice doesn't mean they're okay with you starting a riot, Stanley!" Ford scolded. "Fine, what about all the times in Australia?"

"To be fair, it's Australia. What isn't trying to kill you there?" Stan tried to justify.

"And what about the night in Japan?" Ford asked, but expected another weak attempt at justification from Stan.

"Well, my back was also bad that day," Stan said.

"The fact that at least two of your justifications are on back problems somewhat proves my point," Ford said as he continued to use his laser to mine a chunk out of the wall. "We're growing too old for all this moving around. Besides, I feel four years of straight adventures is quite a satisfactory amount."

"I guess," Stan somewhat agreed, looking down to the side with disappointment. He then looked back up with a smile. "Well, no matter what you decide to do, I'll always be by your side, Ford."

"I appreciate it, Stanley," Ford said with a bit of an unsure look on his face. "But are you sure that's what you want to do?"

"What do you mean?" Stan asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I don't know, I mean…" Ford began. "If I'm being honest with you, Stanley, I was considering going back to working on my own research in regards to the secrets of Gravity Falls again. You know, with the help of Fiddleford and such. Rather than going around monster hunting and such like we have been doing over the last few years, we'd be focusing on lab work and in-field research. Maybe even working on some new inventions."

"Maybe we can invent something to keep a grown man awake because that sounds incredibly boring," Stan told him. "I mean, how do  _I_ even fit in with all of this?"

"Well, that's the thing," Ford said, stopping his laser again. He looked afraid to tell his brother the truth but figured that he needed to be honest with him. "I didn't plan on  _you_  being apart of it."

Stan's eyes bulged in shock at this revelation. His eyes then narrowed angrily at his brother. "Why, you no-good, inconsiderate piece of-"

"Stan, calm down!" Ford demanded, raising his hands in front of him.

"Calm down?! Why?!" Stan asked angrily. "I just spent the past four years of my life adventuring the world with my own brother, and now he's telling me that he didn't even plan on including me in his future after all we've been through in the past!"

"That's not what I meant!" Ford frustratedly tried to defend. "Stanley, you spent thirty years trying to bring me home and while I admittedly wasn't grateful for it at the time, I'm incredibly thankful that you've done so. Because these past four years have been some of the best years of my life! We sailed around the world. We managed to find a few great treasures, even though we almost immediately lost them. And how can we forget the beautiful mermaids we met around the Bermuda?"

"Ah, Shelly," Stan reminisced dreamily. "Such an unforgettable sight she was. That day was probably one of the best parts of these past four years."

"Haha, I'd be lying if I said I didn't agree," Ford chuckled. "Stanley, I'm glad that after all these years, we finally managed to make our childhood dream come true. But now that we've completed the dream, it's time for us to move on. Come up with new dreams and goals," Ford explained to Stan, walking over to him beside the wall of the cave. "It's not that I want nothing to do with you anymore. It's just that maybe we've reached a point where we might wanna take on our own separate ventures. I mean, as I predicted, what I want to do later on is not something you want to do. So I figured that maybe you'd want to find your own way in the world rather than just following me because I'm your brother."

"Well, news flash, Sixer-" Stan began. "-I'm in my sixties. I've been banned from most of the states in the U.S. and hell, I've even been banned from pure countries. I've spent over half of my life either living under your name or in a prison cell. I don't have a degree in anything and I don't even own the Mystery Shack anymore. So let me lay it out for you- if you leave me on my own, then there is absolutely nothing that I can do and nowhere I can go. Meanwhile, if you were to sell that fancy techno-watch of yours the second we got back, you'd probably end up making billions." He crossed his arms again as he looked down to the side sadly. "Just as dad would've wanted."

Ford looked down at Stan with a look of empathy. He got sat down on the ground beside him and put his hand on his shoulder. "And even if I were planning to sell this watch and make billions as you say, what makes you think I wouldn't share any of it with my own brother?"

"That's not the point, Stanford!" Stan exclaimed, smacking his brother's hand off his shoulder. "The point is you got something going for you no matter what you do! I don't. Only someone as smart as you are would be able to survive thirty years across multiple dimensions. If it was me who had gotten stuck inside that portal, I wouldn't have lasted a day. If you tried bringing  _me_ back, you'd only get a body."

"Well, after watching you closely for the past four years, I disagree," Ford said. "You have a lot more potential than you think, Stanley. I know you think it's too late to show it, but I think this summer will be the perfect time to try figure out how to utilize it. This isn't me kicking you aside. This is us figuring out what we wanna do with our lives."

"Yeah? And what if I can't do that?" Stan asked, still denying his ability to figure out such.

"While I don't think you can't, how about we just cross that line when we come to it?" Ford said, getting up from the ground. "Let me finish gathering these elements so we can continue." He held his hand out to Stan. "Can you stand again?"

"I should be able to if my back doesn't suddenly decide to fail as well," Stan said as he reached out and grabbed Ford's hand and picked himself up with Ford's help. He steadied himself on his two feet, which didn't fail on him this time. He smiled as he looked down at his feet. "How about that?"

"Good. Now that that's out of the way, let me keep digging these elements out of the wall," Ford said as he reactivated his laser to keep tracing a chunk in the wall.

"So how exactly are different pieces of rock supposed to close a leak that sends beings to other dimensions?" Stan asked. "Do you just smash two pieces together and an explosion happens?"

"I installed somewhat of a basic function in Meridian to take samples of elements to combine and contain them in the watch to fire as projectiles," Ford explained.

"That's basic?" Stan asked, raising an eyebrow. "And a map isn't?"

"Essentially what happens is that I make a certain mix of elements that create a nuclear reaction, which then allow me to fire a contained nuclear blast at the leak, which would seal it across all dimensions," Ford explained further, dismissing Stan's statement.

"And so how did you handle these things before when you didn't have your fancy-schmancy wristwatch?" Stan asked, crossing his arms.

"Let's just say I was lucky to have been in a dimension with the best treatment to my injuries resulting from much larger, uncontained radioactive explosions," Ford said, recalling his past experiences with multiversal leaks.

Suddenly, there was a cracking sound as Ford had just finished tracing the chunk of rock out of the wall with his laser. He smiled as he deactivated his laser.

"Ah, perfect!" he said as he reached forward to pull the chunk from the wall with his gloved hand. After pulling the chunk out, he looked inside at the hole that was left behind and gasped at what he saw inside. "What the-?"

"What happened?" Stan asked, noticing the reaction of his brother.

"There's something back there," Ford told him. He then placed the chunk of rock down on the ground and backed away from the wall, sticking his arm out as well to signal Stan to do the same.

"What's back there?" Stan asked, curious to what he was talking about.

Instead of answering, Ford pointed Meridian at the wall and fired a laser and began tracing a large round shape in the wall. The laser appeared much more intense this time, as if a setting had been tweaked around in the watch. After tracing a clear shape from the top of the wall to the bottom, he deactivated the laser. Then, with his shoulder in front, he charged at the wall and broke right through his tracing. The stone wall collapsed and broke into small pieces as he broke right through the wall.

"Stanford!" Stan yelled in surprise as he ran up and kneeled down to his brother's side. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he said as he rubbed his shoulder from the pain that was inflicted by the initial impact made with the wall.

As he stood up from the ground and looked forward, his eyes then bulged. Beyond the cave wall that he had just broken through was the interior of what looked like a temple. It was somewhat lit up inside with torches. Oddly, the walls appeared to be made entirely of ice. Ahead of them was some sort of door.

"What the hell is this place?" Stan asked him, looking around the place.

"It looks like some sort of ice temple," Ford said as he looked around the room. As he walked over to the door, it automatically retracted itself open by zooming into the ground, which startled him for a moment. "Huh? Automatic doors…" He turned back to Stan, who was still standing by the initially destroyed wall. "Well, what're you waiting for? Are you coming?"

"Are you insane? You actually want to check this place out?" Stan asked.

"Exploring an ice temple buried behind the wall of a cave connected to the mountain we were originally planning on investigating in the first place?" Ford asked, the idea finally clicking in Stan's mind.

"How could you be so sure that this is the place?" Stan asked, beginning to take some steps into the temple himself.

"I'm not sure, but the fact that this temple is essentially located within the mountain is enough of an anomaly worth investigating on its own," Ford told him as he began walking around the inside of the temple. "I do have a good feeling about this though. There is no way all of this could've been built by man. Perhaps we could find the leak connected somewhere around here."

"Yeah. 'Perhaps'," Stan mocked, somewhat unconvinced.

"The important thing is that we stick together and keep a keen eye out for any unworldly creatures that could potentially be in here with us," Ford reminded him as he readied his wristwatch defensively. "Come on. This way."

Ford began walking down one of the icy hallways, which made Stan sigh due to his brother's outgoing nature when it comes to exploring. Nonetheless, he slowly followed behind him, still aware of how they must stick together to face whatever approaches them.

As Stan looked around at the walls of the temple, he began to notice all the details and how structured the place was. The walls had cubic edges rather than being clean-cut and flat. But even so, it was all so perfectly carved without any irregular ridges. He knew Ford had to have been correct about the place not being man-made because it looked too perfect and clean to be made by humans.

As they continued along the place, he soon began to spot fancy ice-decor among the walls. Or at least he assumed they were decorative. If they were, he couldn't make out what any of them were supposed to be, which once again, added to the likely possibility of the place being designed by anyone other than humans. He was intrigued by them though. He liked their artsy design and was beginning to feel inclined to grab a piece to take with him. To him, these perfectly ice-carved decorations were too perfect to not take at least one.

Ford began walking up a stairwell in the temple, unable to notice that Stan had stopped walking behind him. He had stumbled upon a piece of decor that resembled something of a sword, although he still couldn't entirely tell. But to him, it was the nicest piece he had seen so far and he was positive that he had wanted it.

"Oh, baby," he said dreamily at the sight of the sword. "I know a good spot I could put you back in the Shack." He grabbed the sword-like piece from its stand among the wall and held it firmly in his hands. "If you don't melt, that is."

Ford heard Stan talking to himself as he walked upstairs and turned behind him to see he wasn't following. He sighed frustratedly. "Stanley! What are you doing?!"

"Admiring the place, Sixer!" Stan called back as he looked at the sword.

"Well, hurry up and get up here!" Ford yelled back as he continued walking up the stairs. "We don't know what this place has!"

"Yeah, yeah, I hear ya," Stan called back as he began to slowly make his way over to the stairwell.

Ford then reached a break in the stairwell where there was another door. He walked up to it and triggered it to open automatically, revealing a very dark room in contrast to the rest of torch-lit temple so far. He peeked his head inside and quickly glanced around, but settled on not wishing to explore the room just yet and stepped away from it to continue walking up the stairwell.

As he had stepped away from the door, it automatically closed again. Stan had made this analysis as he looked from the bottom of the stairs, assuming his brother had just walked inside. He sighed as he gave the sword a tight, yet firm grasp as he began to walk up the stairs.

"For someone who says it's important to stick together, he sure has no problems going on without me," Stan said irritatedly to himself as he walked up the steps.

As he reached the break in the stairwell, he walked over to the automatic door and triggered it to open before walking inside. As he stepped further into the room, the automatic door closed behind him. Stan attempted to look around the room to spot his brother but was put off by the pure darkness of the room.

"Stanford?" he called out into the darkness. "You in here? Yeesh, you coulda at least turned on that flashlight on your wristwatch." Stan's eyes began to slightly adjust to the darkness, but even then, a sense of eeriness was beginning to creep on him as the silence continued. "Stanford?"

_WHACK!_

Stan's body plummeted to the ground as he was suddenly knocked unconscious by another being in the room. He had also dropped his ice sword, causing it to shatter against the ground into a bunch of pieces. Several different types of laughter then echoed through the room as his body was then dragged away amongst the ground to another part of the room by a group of figures.

* * *

Ford continued to walk up the stairs until he had reached the top. However, once he had gotten to the top of the stairwell, he stopped in his place, somewhat shocked at what he saw right before his eyes. It appeared to be some sort of mangled shrine room. In contrast to the rest of the temple he had seen so far, this was, by far, the messiest room. There were shattered ice decorations and what looks to have been a former ice statue that was also completely shattered.

In the middle of the room, there was a stand that was still somewhat intact. As Ford got closer to it, he had realized that it was actually an information board. He looked around the room some more before cautiously walking over to it. On the board was an inscription.

_VY GURR LYJILP KJLOPWYL JVCP VY GCK OPAY XOLQYZ._

_VY GURR RUBYLCJY JVY OPY GVO RUBYLCJYZ VUQ._

_VY GURR VCHY VUK HYPWYCPAY._

_ONLY HE CAN FREE US FROM THIS REALM AND_

_RARELY WILL THIS OPPORTUNITY EVER ARRIVE AGAIN._

_MANY WILL DIE BENEATH HIM AND MANY WILL KNEEL BEFORE HIM._

_IT HAS BEEN SAID BEFORE AND IT WILL BE SAID AGAIN THAT_

_NEVER WILL ANY ORDINARY BEING BE ABLE TO GET IN HIS WAY. NOT_

_EVEN IN THE DARKEST HOUR OF HIS RETURN, AS PURE_

_OMNIPOTENCE IS WITHIN MERE REACHING DISTANCE._

_UNLESS THE ONE HE HAS SINCE SPAWNED IS TO STRIKE AGAIN, THEN_

_SOON THE AXOLOTL WILL BE BENEATH HIM TOO._

"What the-?" Ford whispered quietly to himself as he read the inscription in his head. It was one of the oddest things he had ever read and the most weirdly structured inscription he had ever seen. It seemed to have been calling about some powerful being, but there were no details.

There was, however, a mention of the Axolotl which sent a chill down his spine due to the familiar nature the term had with him. He had heard the name several times during his time in the portal but had never come close to learning what it meant or who it was. The way the inscription was presented implied it was some sort of powerful being as well as that it will soon be beneath the one the inscription was praising. Whoever it was praising, he had no idea about.

He heard a faint noise coming from the staircase, who he could only presume to be Stan finally coming upstairs. "Check this out, Stanley!" he called out as he scratched his head, looking at the inscription curiously. After hearing nothing in return, he turned to look over at the staircase. "Stanley?"

Suddenly, there was a flood of slimy and sticky noises that seemed to come from the stairwell. Unsettled, Ford began to back up further from the stairs and away from the board with the inscription. "Stanley?!" he called out worriedly.

At that moment, multiple giant, yellow slug-like creatures with multiple eyeballs began flooding into the room from the staircase. Ford's eyes bulged at the sight of these creatures, as he immediately recognized these Eye-Slugs as beings he had once seen in the Nightmare Realm as another type of infantry-being under Bill Cipher alongside the Eye-Bats.

"Uh oh."

The Eye-Slugs immediately spotted Ford as they poured into the room and began to quickly rush after him. As they got closer to him, they began to leap at him in attempt to attack him. Ford quickly readied his laser on his wristwatch and began to blast the creatures one by one, each shot instantly killing them. However, the room kept flooding with these quick creatures and despite his efforts to suppress them, they continued to greatly outnumber him. Eventually, the slugs began to hop on top of him, forcing him to have to physically punch them off, but he was quickly restrained by many of them and was forced to the ground.

"Get off of me!" Ford shouted desperately as he continued to try to resist the tough grasps of the slugs, moving heavily among his arms and legs.

His resistance was no use, as the slugs were too big and strong and any type of movement was quickly restrained by them. As slimy bodies of atrocious-looking beings sticking against him and the floor prospered, a single slug decided to jump right above Ford, landing right on his face, finally subduing him.


	14. The Arctic Stan: Part 3

Ford struggled among the ground as the large Eye-Slugs continued to crawl and squirm all over him. His face was currently stuck under one of them and could no longer see anything. He could barely even breathe. His arms and legs were all restrained by the heavy bodies of the slugs and he was unable to make any sudden movements that could assist in freeing him. He was stuck and almost completely helpless at that moment.

However, one of the Eye-Slugs lying on his left arm continually squirmed among his wrist. Meridian was indirectly being tapped with every move it made, activating many of Ford's in-watch features. Ford could feel Meridian's features being triggered and knew if he could somehow get to it again, he could potentially escape.

He soon felt his wrist getting warmer and warmer. Eventually, the heat he felt grew strong to the point where it was unnaturally hot. He then realized that the laser function had been activated, and it was contained underneath the Eye-Slug on top of it, which was causing it to continually build and get larger and hotter underneath it. Soon, the laser became intense enough to slice through the slug and kill it, freeing Ford's hand.

The laser was still active after the kill, so Ford began aiming his arm back and forth around the room without any clear sight of what he was aiming at. But despite his inability to see the action, he was actually killing and slicing through multiple Eye-Slugs, quickly clearing out the room. He then aimed the laser above his head and neutralized the slugs that were on top of him. He felt the weight of the slugs on him decrease substantially and was able to slide his arms and legs from underneath their dead remains. He used his other hand to push the slug off of his face and took a deep gasp of air as he freed himself. After settling down, he quickly deactivated the laser on his watch and looked around the room.

The place was a bloodbath. There were potentially a hundred Eye-Slugs that had poured into the room and while he was blinded and restrained by a good few on top of him, he had somehow managed to wipe every single one of them out. The place was now oozing in green slime all over the ice carved walls. Ford himself was even covered with the same moist substance that generally coated the slugs. He looked down at his clothes in disgust as he uselessly wiped himself down.

"Revolting," Ford said with a look of repugnance. He then gasped as he made a sudden realization. "Stanley!"

Ford had quickly dismissed the distasteful slime as he remembered the absence of his brother. Realizing he had last been seen downstairs and the slugs had flooded in from there, he began to panic. He then quickly ran for the stairwell past all the dead slugs and rushed down the stairs, skipping down the steps to reach the bottom as fast as he could.

Upon reaching the bottom of the stairwell, he quickly stepped forward and cupped his hands around his mouth to amplify his call.

"STANLEY!"

He waited a good moment, frantically glancing around the room. There was still no response.

"STANLEY, WHERE ARE YOU?!"

He was ready to start running around the entire temple in search of him, but soon heard the sound of an automatic door behind him. He quickly turned around and looked upstairs and caught a glance of the door in the stairwell break wide open before closing again. However, he didn't see anyone who was there to have triggered the door. He immediately knew it couldn't have been Stan unless he was trying to pull some sick prank on him, which wasn't out of his alley. However, he felt they were both well aware of the potential dangers that the place provided and that'd they'd both be serious when the time arrived. And the simple fact that he was nearly murdered by a bunch of Eye-Slugs was enough to imply there was more than a few potential dangers.

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously as he cautiously walked back up the stairs with Meridian armed and ready. As he reached the break, he approached the door and triggered it to open automatically. The room was just as dark as it was when he had first glanced inside it. He knew for a fact he was being lured.

He activated Meridian's flashlight as he slowly walked inside, glancing around at every direction for a potential surprise attack. The room itself appeared to look like some sort of round, spacious living room with ice chairs, ice tables, ice shelves, ice decorations, and, ironically, an ice fireplace. The most notable thing to him upon entering the room was that there was no other door or way out of the room beside the way he came in. The room itself looked like a dead end, and so anyone who had walked inside must've been hiding really well. He began to inspect every open corner for anyone or anything that might've been hidden within the room.

"Stanford?"

Startled, Ford jumped up and turned right behind him with his watch ready to fire. He quickly aimed it down upon seeing that it was his brother standing at the door. "Stanley?"

"Woah, easy there with that thing," Stan told him, holding his hands out defensively.

"What the hell is the matter with you?!" Ford scolded as he walked up to him. "Did you not hear me calling out for you?"

"Uh, no. I didn't," Stan admitted, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "Sorry about that."

"Sorry? I just faced a horde of Eye-Slugs upstairs and was nearly suffocated by them and you weren't even there to help me!" Ford continued to scold. "And all you have to say is sorry?"

"Calm down, Stanford. At least you handled it. You're good at that type of stuff," Stan told him as he walked over to him and put his hand on his back. "I'm here now. We can do this together again."

Ford was somewhat weirded out by the way Stan was speaking to him and acting. He then casually, yet cautiously, walked away from him and out of his grasp. " _Riiiight_. Anyways, while you were busy doing whatever you've been doing that past couple of minutes, I believe I've traced someone down to this room."

"Where do you think he is?" Stan asked, giving Ford an unusually curious look as he searched around the room.

"Most likely hiding," Ford suggested as he got on his knees and looked underneath the couch. "Maybe underneath one of these seats or in between a bookshelf or something."

"Wrong answer."

Ford straightened himself on his knees and looked back at Stan in confusion. "What?"

_WHACK!_

Ford was pummeled in the face by Stan, causing him to fall to the ground unconscious. Stan walked over to him and stared at his body as he began laughing maniacally, before slowly beginning to fade away.

* * *

Ford's eyes slowly began to open as he started coming to. He glanced around the room with his weary eyes until he started comprehending where he was and what was happening. He then violently shook his head to straighten out his thoughts and realized that he was trapped in a grasp of some sort, as his arms and legs were completely immovable. He looked down and noticed he was being held in the hands some giant beast.

"Huh?" he said as he turned his head around to see what looked to be some type of ogre, but it was wearing some interesting apparel. It wore a backwards baseball cap, sunglasses, a white T-shirt under its blue flannel, jeans, and wore socks with sandals. It then noticed Ford wake up and looked back down at him.

"Oh, did I wake you up, bro?" the creature asked in a deep, yet innocent voice. "Sorry 'bout that, bro. My hands tend to be kinda shaky and stuff. Think I need to get them checked out at some point."

"What the-?" Ford questioned. "Where am I? What is this?"

"You're at the top of the mountain, dude!" the ogre said excitedly with a friendly and relaxed smile. "Also in my hands, but I figure that's obvious. By the way, name's the Brogre. I'd shake your hand, but ehh," he said as he glanced back and forth between his own hands and Ford within them. "Ya know how it is right now."

"Brogre! Stop making friendly banter with the prisoner!"

Ford looked forward at where the voice had come from, and his eyes bulged at the sight the creatures that began to approach him. He immediately realized he should've seen this coming after encountering the Eye-Slugs. In front of him stood an entire group of Bill's old associates: Hectorgon, Paci-Fire, Keyhole, Kryptos, and Pyronica. Alongside the five were two other associates that he hadn't seen before. One appeared as an ongoing string of pure white electricity with a feminine shape and the other was some type of gray ghostly figure with a short body.

"Sorry, boss," Brogre apologized to Hectorgon for bantering with Ford.

"Stanford Pines," Hectorgon named as he floated up to him. "It's been quite a while, hasn't it?"

"Bill's cronies..." Ford named, absolutely shocked by the sight of them. "How is this possible? We shut you all out to the Nightmare Realm when Weirdmageddon ended!"

"Well, you see-" Hectorgon prepared to explain.

" _HA! IT WAS EASY!_ " Kryptos intervened. " _WHEN THE RIFT CLOSED, IT ACTUALLY ENDED UP CREATING THIS LEAK THAT ALLOWED US TO COME BACK HERE!_ "

"QUIET, KRYPTOS!" Hectorgon ordered angrily.

" _SORRY!_ " Kryptos apologized dejectedly.

Hectorgon slowly turned away from him and looked back at Ford. "Anyways, it was easy. When the rift closed, it actually ended up creating this leak that allowed us to come back here!"

"Not before spending a year going through a bunch of other dimensions first that is," Pryonica added as she crossed her arms.

"That's correct," Hectorgon confirmed. "The randomness of the leak's warps made returning to your dimension a bit of a complicated task. Because of it, we lost a few old faces you may recall. 8 Ball? Amorphous Shape? Teeth? Zanthar?"

"We lost Teeth and Zanthar in a dimension where the floor was lava," Keyhole explained with a mournful look on his face. "But Amorphous Shape actually went back home to his family in the Amorphous dimension," he continued as his eyes then narrowed angrily at the thought. "Sentimental piece of garbage."

"Yes, yes," Hectorgon agreed. "8 Ball, however, actually did end up here with us. It wasn't until he and Kryptos ended up getting into a petty argument about what the best shape was and Kryptos pushed him back into the leak."

" _HE SAID CIRCLES WERE BETTER THAN RHOMBUSES!_ " Kryptos attempted to defend. " _I HAD TO PROVE HIM WRONG!_ "

"I SAID 'QUIET', KRYPTOS!" Hectorgon scolded again. "Anyways, considering that was two years ago, we just assume he has died as well."

"Two years? And a year between dimensions right after Weirdmageddon. So that means you all got here three years ago?" Ford questioned.

"Correct. Smart, you are," Hectorgon nodded. "We spent about a year in between dimensions before we all ended up meeting up here together. But because we don't have Bill to bridge the Nightmare Realm with your dimension, our powers can't be amplified and so we're weaker on our own. We decided to hold here and wait for the leak to continue expanding and for us to eventually take on an opportunity to take on the world for ourselves."

"So I furnished the place!" Keyhole intervened. "Doesn't it all look great."

"Yes, Keyhole. It's lovely," Hectorgon replied in a sarcastic voice before turning back to Ford. "Of course, the leak exists across dimensions, so there were occasionally other beings that would end up here. Most of them were no use to us, so we tossed them into the ocean."

"Huh, well that explains all the giant three-headed lizards failing to swim on our way here," Ford realized to himself.

"But some that came from the leak made plenty of use," Pyronica added as she gestured toward Brogre. "Brogre..."

"Sup," Brogre greeted with an acknowledging nod.

"...Electora…" she continued, gesturing toward the female figure made of white electricity. Pyronica then gestured over to the ghostly one. "...and her husband, Haunter."

"The  _best_  husband ever," Electora said as she flew up to Haunter and tried to hug him, but accidentally shocked him with her electricity. She flinched backed and gave an apologetic face toward him.

Haunter huffed angrily as he glared at her with disinterest. "You too,  _dear_."

Pyronica then flew up to Ford and grinned at him. "Not to mention an entire horde of Eye-Slugs."

"Well, those things didn't make enough use," Ford rebutted. "They only held me down for about a minute before I destroyed them all. If you really wanted to stop me, then you should've sent in creatures that weren't as discounted."

"We did, actually," Pyronica said, glancing over at Haunter. "Haunter?"

"A little demonstration?" Haunter asked with a chuckle. Suddenly, an image of the man that the twins ran into on their way to the mountain was projected in front of him. "Howdy, Stanford!" Haunter's body movement and speech were mimicked by the projection of the man until Haunter made the projection fade away.

"You...you were the man we ran into?" Ford asked, appalled by this revelation. This reveal also made him come to another realization. "WAIT A MINUTE! You made a ghostly projection of my brother too, didn't you?"

"Oh! That was a good one!" Haunter realized. He then projected an image of Stan right in front of him. " _Durr_ , I'm Stan Pines. I have a super smart brother who's just as dumb and gullible enough to fall for a fake version of his brother, who was made by a ghost who can create tangible ghost clones of anyone and anything he wants."

Ford gritted his teeth together angrily as Haunter, his ghost projection of Stan, and everyone else began laughing loudly. He'd clench his fist too if he could even move them in Brogre's grasp.

"Good one, darling!" Electora exclaimed to Haunter.

Haunter immediately stopped laughing and groaned out of slight annoyance, rolling his eyes to the side. "Thanks, dear…"

"What did you maniacs do with my real brother?!" Ford asked angrily, getting impatient.

Hectorgon grinned, before snapping his fingers at Electora, who nodded and flew back down the hall behind them. After a few seconds, she came back rolling a metal table over with Stan lying unconscious on top of it, his hands and legs strapped down to the table with metal cuffs. Brogre then proceeded to back up to make room for them to set up.

Kryptos then floated over to a wall with a lever on it. He let out a light chuckle before pulling it down. At that moment, the icy floorboard in the center of the room opened up and inside was a large glowing multicolor portal-like rift. Ford stared down at the multiversal leak as it spun irregularly in horror. He looked back at Stan on the table, as Electora pressed a button that triggered the table come off of a lift that protruded up and forward.

"We never thought this moment would ever come, Stanford," Hectorgon said. "And so we never prepared for it. But we knew what to do should this time ever arrive and the second Haunter informed us that you had two were coming, we realized this was our chance to finally strike back."

Ford continued to watch in horror as Stan was still being automatically protruded forward toward the leak. "What are you doing with him?!" He quickly turned his head to look at the Brogre. "You! Let me go, this instant!"

"Sorry, bro," Brogre shook his head. "I mean, you're kinda on the other side here. Letting you go would be, like, betraying these guys."

"Indeed, it would," Hectorgon confirmed. "So you're going to hold him tight, Brogre, and never let him go."

Electora pressed a button on the lift, which caused the metal table to stop moving forward, which left Stan's body paused directly in front of the leak. Paci-Fire, who had been the most silent one of the entire team so far, then walked over in front of Stan on the other side of the leak and gave a thumbs up.

"STANLEY!" Ford yelled frantically. "WAKE UP, STANLEY! YOU HEAR ME?! WAKE UP!"

"Don't worry, Stanford," Hectorgon said as he floated up to him. "I can assure you- he won't feel a thing."

Hectorgon gave Electora a thumbs up. She then positioned herself right behind Stan's table and charged her hands with electric bolts before blasting a continuous stream of electricity against the back of the metal table Stan was strapped to, which began to shock him. Paci-Fire's gold forehead began to glow red as he focused on the bolts. The white electricity then turned red for a moment before Paci-Fire pulled Electora's electricity into making contact with the leak itself. As the electricity made contact with the multiversal leak, the color of the electricity surrounding Stan's table began to change continuously through many different chromatic colors, similarly to the leak itself.

As the process continued for a few seconds, Stan himself eventually began to scream in agony, shutting his eyes tightly. Ford began to panic and struggle whilst in the Brogre's grasp as he watched his brother suffer due to whatever the Realm creatures were trying to accomplish.

"NO! LEAVE HIM BE!" Ford cried out frantically. "WHAT HAS HE DONE TO ANY OF YOU?! IT'S ME THAT YOU WANT! NOT HIM!"

"I can assure you, Stanford!" Hectorgon called out to him as he watched the procedure take place. "He is  _exactly_ the one we want."

Ford couldn't stand to see Stan in pain any longer, nor did he care what the Realm creatures were planning at that moment. He just needed to save his brother. Brogre was clearly not going to let him go so he had to take things to desperate measures. He opened his mouth and bit down as hard as he could on Brogre's finger.

"YOW!" Brogre cried out in pain, flinching his hand open, dropping Ford from his grasp. "Not cool, bro!"

Ford did a roll as he landed on the ground. He rubbed his mouth and spat on the ground in disgust of biting Brogre's finger. He then looked back up at everyone else. While Brogre was too busy caring for his hurt finger, Hectorgon, Pyronica, Keyhole, Kryptos, and Haunter immediately noticed Ford free himself and looked at him. Electora and Paci-Fire, however, continued their procedure on Stan without involving themselves in the matter. Ford looked down at Meridian and began pressing a variety of different buttons.

"I know this feature is unfinished, but please work right for me this one time," he pleaded to himself.

He then pressed a final button and raised his hand up. At that moment, Meridian transformed and expanded itself into a bunch of metal and cyber parts that wrapped around Ford's hand to his entire forearm. As the parts finished assembling, Meridian was now transformed into some sort of cyborg exoskeleton arm for Ford.

Ford frowned and gave a frustrated look. "Dammit! Just the arm?" He then looked up at all of the Realm creatures, who were in battle stance. "I guess it'll have to do."

Hectorgon looked over at Brogre, who was sucking on his finger. "What's the matter with you? I said not to let him go!"

Brogre stopped sucking on his finger and smiled apologetically at him. "Sorry, boss. I'm on it!" He then looked down at Ford and began to slowly walk over to him, raising his arms out in front of him. "C'mon, bro. It doesn't have to be like this."

"Unfortunately, 'bro', it does," Ford mocked as he leaped forward and used his cyborg arm to punch Brogre in the face. The other side of Brogre's head then smacked hard against the ice wall and he came falling to the ground behind him, knocking himself unconscious.

"No!" Hectorgon exclaimed angrily.

" _I GOT HIM, BOSS!_ " Kryptos exclaimed as he began rushing after Ford.

Aware of Kryptos coming after him, he quickly ran over to Brogre's knocked out body. He looked at his cyborg arm curiously. "Please tell me that I remembered to install the ability to lift heavy things in here," he pleaded to himself. He then used both his cyborg arm and normal arm to grab onto one of the Brogre's feet and then toss his entire body to the side at Kryptos, using his normal arm merely for support.

Kryptos was immediately hit by Brogre's heavy body, which sent him flying across the room. He ended up in the corner of the room with Brogre's body flat on top of him. Kryptos attempted to push Brogre off but found him too heavy.

" _SOMEONE HELP ME! I'M STUCK UNDER BROGRE!_ " Kryptos cried out.

"Someone go help Kryptos!" Hectorgon ordered.

"You do it!" Pyronica talked back as she flew up beside him. She glanced down at Ford. "I got the brother!"

She flew after Ford while Hectorgon looked at his own arms, which he knew wouldn't be any use in helping Kryptos out. He then looked back at him as he continued to struggle under Brogre.

" _SOMEONE! PLEASE!_ " Kryptos cried out again, still struggling underneath Brogre.

"Don't worry, Kryptos! Someone will come!" Hectorgon called back. He then gave an unsure look. "Eventually..."

From the air, Pyronica lunged right at Ford, but he ducked down and she crashed straight down on the ice. She got up and put herself into a fighting stance. Ford turned back toward her and aimed his cyborg arm at her, expelling a blast of fire from the palm of his hand at her. She covered her face from the flames with her arms, but being somewhat made of fire herself, she was completely unscathed by his attack. He finished shooting fire at her, the blast having formed a perfect ring of fire on the ice around her.

"Ha! You know I'm resistant to fire, right? My name's  _Pyro_ nica, for Pete's sake," Pyronica reminded him. "I thought  _you_ were the smart one."

"Oh, I know. I wasn't quite aiming for you," Ford assured her with a grin. He then pointed down below her.

Pyronica looked down and realized that the ring of fire was actually melting and cracking the ice beneath her. She then fell straight through the ice and fell downstairs, where she crashed through another floor of ice and into a pit of thick snow. Being partially made of flames, she was progressively becoming more and more extinguished as the events transpired. The snow put the finishing blow on her and completely burned out her flames due to its intense cold giving off on her. Too weak to move, she finally collapsed within snow pile.

Ford looked down at the whole he had sent Pyronica down before looking back up at Hectorgon, Keyhole, and Haunter. He grinned at them. "That's three."

"I got him, boss!" Keyhole shouted as he began running up to Ford.

Hectorgon zoomed after Keyhole and stopped him in his place. "NO! Stop trying to solo him!" He looked over at Haunter. "The only way we're going to beat him is if we work together!"

"You're right," Haunter agreed. "So stop talking and get to fighting!"

Haunter then created projections of a bunch of large pointy ice picks and sent them after Ford, who began to quickly do rolls to avoid them as they made contact with the wall and immediately disappeared. He continued making projections of the picks to go after Ford but was still unable to get him due to his evasion skills. Hectorgon then lunged at Ford and prepared to punch him, but Ford caught his punch with his cyborg arm and threw him at Keyhole, causing them to fall back violently into a corner together.

Getting considerably more annoyed each passing second, Haunter sent an even larger ice pick after Ford while he wasn't looking. Ford quickly turned around and noticed the pick, quickly using his cyborg arm to grab ahold of it. He then jumped over at Keyhole and shoved the tangible ice pick into his keyhole, before quickly turning it, causing a clicking sound as if he had just unlocked something. He then jumped away from him, leaving him lying beside Hectorgon in the corner.

"Uh oh," Keyhole said as the ghostly ice pick disappeared from his keyhole. His pupils then disappeared and his eyes began to glow blue as he began to shake uncontrollably.

Hectorgon then got up beside Keyhole and glanced over at him. "Keyhole, are you okay?"

Keyhole didn't respond but instead shook more violently. A yellow light then began to emit from his keyhole.

"Keyhole?" Hectorgon repeated in a nervous tone.

Before Hectorgon could react, Keyhole promptly exploded, creating a large hole in the corner of the room that also went through the mountain itself, revealing the outside and even docked in the distance, the Stan O' War II. The explosion also sent Hectorgon flying across the room and into another wall of ice. He then fell out of the wall and collapsed on the ground, also getting knocked unconscious.

"That's two more down," Ford stated. However, he was suddenly knocked down to the ground violently. He rubbed his face, where he had felt himself get hit. He looked around and didn't see anyone. He suddenly felt himself get punched in the face a couple more times, getting knocked around on the floor.

"I'm glad you're enjoying this, Stanford," Haunter's voice crept as his visibility suddenly faded in.

"Ah, so you can turn invisible too?" Ford asked as he got up and wiped some blood from his mouth with his hand.

"I can do a lot of things," Haunter said. "Why I waited until now to use them? I don't know. But now I'm gonna do what the others couldn't and end you."

"We'll see about that," Ford said as he lunged his cyborg arm forward at him. However, Ford's hand phased straight through Haunter's body, not harming him. Haunter then punched him back against the ground, catching him by surprise. "What the-?"

"That's right! I can turn intangible too!" Haunter gloated. "You can't touch me…" Haunter stated as he began pummeling Ford in the face a few times against the ground. "...but I can touch you!"

"Well, that's fair," Ford said sarcastically as he groaned a bit in pain.

"You just took out over half of the whole team. You think I care about fairness?" Haunter questioned with a laugh.

From behind the metal table, Electora suddenly noticed Haunter taking on Ford by himself. She gasped in fear and stop firing electricity at the metal table, flying over to him. No longer being electrocuted, Stan settled down and his body went limp, going completely unconscious again. Paci-Fire looked up in confusion, seeing Electora get away from her place.

" _Electora!_ " Paci-Fire called out to her, confused.

At that moment, Haunter created a few projections of various metal spears that were pointed directly at Ford. Haunter grinned sinisterly at him. "Goodbye, Stanford."

Electora then flew up and approached Haunter. "Is this man bothering you, my love?"

Haunter turned to Electora in confusion. "Electora? What? No! I was about to finish h-"

"Don't worry! I'll save you!" Electora cut off as she charged a bolt of electricity.

While Haunter wasn't looking, Ford quickly got up from the ground and stepped away from the projected spears. At the same moment, Electora targeted him with another continuous blast of electricity, to which Haunter and his spears were in the way of.

"NO, DARLING! DON'T!" Haunter cried out. "THESE ARE METAL SPE- _eEeEeEeEeAaAaRrRrSsSs!_ "

The electricity had attracted itself to all of Haunter's spears, which ended up bouncing off one another and electrocuted him as well. He was electrocuted for a good moment before Electora herself was able to figure out that she had targetted him instead of Ford. Once she realized, she stopped her stream of electricity, leaving Haunter completely burnt up as he fell to the ground, knocking him out.

Electora cupped her mouth with her hands in shock. "My love?"

"Well, that's quite a shame," Ford said as he stood behind her, a position he managed to grab when she wasn't paying attention.

She quickly looked behind herself and stared directly at him. Her eyes narrowed angrily as she began charging another blast of electricity. "You!" she screamed angrily as she blasted another stream of electricity at him.

Ford stuck his cyborg hand out and caught the stream of electricity in his hand and began to continuously absorb it at the same rate that Electora blasted it. He himself, however, was not affected by any of the electricity besides the occasional shock, but they didn't bother him. Electora was getting angered by his resistance to her attack and began to strengthen her blast. This caused Ford to get knocked back in his place a little but found himself able to absorb the blast with his hand and keep his stance.

Electora soon began to grow weak and tired of firing continuously at Ford, but she fought against herself and continued to fire as hard as she could. Ford, however, wasn't showing any signs of stopping and kept a straight face the whole way through. Eventually, Electora's eyes began to grow weary and her electricity blast slowly grew weaker and weaker until it stopped entirely. She then collapsed to her arms and knees, attempting to pull herself up again, but found herself collapsing entirely.

Ford took a series of deep breaths as he held all the electricity absorbed from her blast in his cyborg arm. He then looked around quickly, not spotting anyone else right away. "I think that's everyone."

" _You forgot about me!_ "

Ford turned around to spot Paci-Fire charging at him with his giant bullhorns.

"Oh, right," Ford said casually as he remembered him.

Ford then pointed his cyborg arm at Paci-Fire and blasted all the absorbed electricity at him with one large blast. Paci-Fire screamed out in agony as all the electricity quickly flowed through him at a similar rate as someone getting shot with a minigun. After Ford's blast finished, Paci-Fire stood standing on his feet for a moment as his red aura faded away. His heavy body then slowly fell backward before crashing violently against the ice floor.

Ford glanced around the room once more and finally verified that everyone was neutralized. "Very well, then." He then pressed a button on his cyborg arm, which caused all the metal and cyber parts of Meridian to retract back into the formation of a wristwatch. Ford then gave an uncomfortable frown as he began to shake his hand off of an unpleasant feeling. "Yikes. Gotta remember to fix the numbness after reversion."

He then looked up at Stan, who he saw was still unconscious and strapped to the metal table, hanging dangerously close to the leak itself, which was spinning more rapidly and sparking bits of electricity.

"Stanley!" he yelled as he ran over to the lift. He pressed a button to retract the lift, slowly bringing the table back and away from the leak. He wasn't sure what Electora and Paci-Fire were doing to him, but he hoped it wasn't anything severe or permanent.

After a moment, the table finished retracting and laid Stan flat in front of him. Ford quickly undid his cuffs and put his hands on him and began shaking him.

"Stanley, get up!" Ford demanded as he kept shaking him. There was no response, and so he placed his ear against his chest. He heard a heartbeat, so he knew he wasn't quite dead. He continued to shake him on the table. "Stanley, please!"

Suddenly, Stan's eyes opened wide at Ford, causing him to gasp in fear. Stan's pupils were completely gone and the whites of his eyes glowed yellow. Stan stared at Ford for a brief moment without making a sound or any other movement.

"Stan?" Ford asked fearfully.

After a brief moment, Stan's eyes went back to normal. His pupils returned and his eyes stopped glowing yellow. He blinked constantly a few times before looking up at Ford wearily, groaning in pain as he sat himself up on the metal table.

"Sixer?" Stan questioned as he looked over at him.

"Stanley!" Ford said joyfully as he quickly hugged him.

"OOOH!" Stan shouted in pain as Ford wrapped his arms around him.

Ford quickly flinched away at the sound of his cry. "Sorry."

" _God_ , what happened?" Stan asked as he scratched his head. "I honestly haven't felt this messed up since the morning after prom."

"It turns out Bill's old buddies emerged from the multiversal leak and spent their time cooped up in this mountain," Ford explained. "And for some reason, they needed  _you_ to perform some sort of experiment. I'm not quite sure what it was exactly, but how do you feel?"

"Everything hurts," Stan groaned as he slowly stepped off of the metal table. "But it's somewhat bearable, at least." He then looked around the room and saw all the unconscious bodies and the blown up corner of the room. "Um, are these guys all dead or…?"

"I'm confident that  _at least_  half of them are just unconscious," Ford assured him.

A sudden spike of electricity emerged from the leak and hit the ground right beside the twins. The two quickly looked down at the leak and saw it was spinning at an incredibly fast speed.

"Oh no," Ford said worriedly.

"What? What is that?" Stan questioned.

"That's the multiversal rift," Ford told him as he backed away from it and started tapping away on Meridian. "And it's destabilizing."

"Speak English, Sixer," Stan said, unable to understand what Ford meant.

"Jesus Christ, Stanley. That means it's becoming unstable!" Ford explained irritatedly. "Electora probably overloaded the leak when she was electrocuting the table."

"Electra-table, who?" Stan asked, trying to comprehend what Ford was explaining.

"We need to seal that leak now before it creates an implosion on a global scale," Ford told Stan as he tapped various buttons on Meridian while also dismissing his previous statement.

"Well, don't you have those elements to seal it up with a contained nuke or something?" Stan asked.

"Yes, but it looks like I've drained out too much of Meridian's main battery to be able to do that," Ford said, frowning at his watch.

"Drained battery? Really, Sixer?" Stan asked annoyedly. "You can make a lightbulb last a thousand years, but you can't make a decent battery for an overblown wristwatch?"

"Prototype, Stanley! I'm working on it!" Ford reminded him aggravatedly. "At the very least, I installed a lifelong emergency toast backup battery for emergency food situations."

"A lifelong...emergency...toast...backup battery?" Stan questioned, incredibly dumbfounded by Ford's design decisions with his prototype of Meridian.

Ford sighed. "Look, now's not the time to start mocking my inventing decisions."

"Fine. How are we gonna seal this thing then?" Stan asked, crossing his arms.

"Well, luckily I have just enough power to at least utilize my backup plan. Unfortunately, toast feature aside, Meridian will be essentially dead until we get back to my lab back home," Ford told him.

"That's fine. I can do a trip home eating nothing but toast," Stan said, rolling his eyes.

Ford then tapped a button on Meridian, which triggered a few green laser lights to project a three-dimensional image of some type of box. The lights started to merge and sculpt the box, before creating a bright flash of light. After the light faded away, Ford was left with a metal box in hand.

"What's that?" Stan asked curiously.

"It's formally called a DB, or a dimension-bomb," Ford explained as he planted the box on the floor. "It's a time bomb that blows anything within a two-mile radius into a random dimension. It will also seal the multiversal leak at the same time."

"How the hell do you make these things?" Stan asked, absolutely flabbergasted by Ford's ability to produce such items.

"I actually don't make these," Ford clarified. "These things are considered terrorist devices across the multiverse. This one I snagged pretty early on during my time in the portal from a group of criminals who were actually planning to do some real dimensional terrorism with it. In our case, the next two miles isn't anything but frozen wasteland and mountains. Not even any famous ones. People may wonder what will have happened here, but no one will miss anything. Wherever everything ends getting sent to, however, let's hope isn't an issue for anyone else."

"No one will trace this back to us, right?" Stan asked. "I mean, I've been arrested for some dumb stuff before, but annihilating a frozen mountain is a whole 'nother level."

"I doubt it," Ford said as he tapped buttons on the bomb. "There, the bomb is just about armed. But here comes our main issue- we only have five minutes before it blows."

"WHAT?!" Stan asked, completely shocked by the amount of time. "Sixer, you know  _for a fact_ that it did not take us anywhere  _near_  five minutes to get here! Five minutes to get all the way back to the Stan O' War?! That's impossible!" Stan walked over toward the blown-up corner and looked out into the distance to see the Stan O' War II docked beside the plot of land. He then turned back toward Ford. "Of course, it wouldn't be if someone had put a teleporter feature on their fancy, techno-watch!"

"Dammit, Stanley!" Ford shouted angrily. "Even if I had put a teleporter in here, there wouldn't be any battery power to use it!"

"So what do you suggest then, smart one?!" Stan asked, also getting somewhat angry. "You wanna use one of these monsters as a sled to get down the mountain all the way to the Stan O' War?!"

Ford looked at him to make a rebuttal, but Stan's ironic suggestion made him glance at the unconscious Realm creatures considerably. He then glanced back at Stan with a wide grin. Stan realized what his grin meant and felt immediate regret at coming up with his suggestion.

"Ah, crap."

* * *

Paci-Fire's body was laid out on the ground right next to the giant hole in the corner of the room caused by Keyhole's explosion. Stan sat on top of Paci-Fire's back with a terrified look on his face as he stared outside and down the mountain. His fear of heights has been long since cured, but the sight of the bottom of a mountain from such a high altitude was very unsettling to him.

He glanced over at Ford, who was still tinkering with the bomb. "Hey Poindexter! What's the hold-up? I thought you said that thing was just about armed!"

"I'm just ensuring that all I need to do is press one button," Ford explained. "The last thing I want is to activate it and it doesn't go off after five minutes or there's a glitch that messes up the timer or some other inconvenience. I just want to be safe."

"Yeah,  _you_ want to be safe," Stan said with an eye roll. "Meanwhile, I'm not feeling so safe just sitting here on this thing." Stan then placed his hand on Paci-Fire's back. "Also, this guy's name is Paci- _Fire_ , right? Because for a guy with that type of name, his body is surprisingly cold."

"Alright!" Ford exclaimed as he stepped away from the bomb and ran over to Paci-Fire. "It's active! Now let's get the hell outta here!"

"Well, we're waiting on you, Sixer," Stan told him as he made room for Ford to sit in front of him.

Ford took a seat in front of Stan and grabbed ahold of Paci-Fire's bullhorns tightly. "Alright Stanley, get ready to hold on tight."

" _STAN PINES!_ "

Stan and Ford quickly turned around to see Kryptos still stuck and struggling underneath the unconscious Brogre. He looked in their direction and gave them an evil glare.

" _YOU HAVEN'T WON YET! ORMINEOUS IS COMING BACK!_ " he warned. " _IF YOU THINK YOU'VE WON, THEN YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT'S COMING! YOUR MIND ISN'T SAFE!_ "

The twins glanced at one another with confused looks until looking back at Kryptos.

"Well, I have news for you- I have over sixty years under my belt," Stan told Kryptos. "Therefore, my mind was never safe before today and it never will be again."

"Hope you find paradise wherever you're going, Kryptos!" Ford waved, with Kryptos responding with nothing but an annoyed glare.

Ford then kicked back against the ground, propelling Paci-Fire's body forward enough to lean forward and start sliding against the snowy slope. The body began to gain momentum and they started sledding faster down the mountain. Stan wrapped his arms around Ford's waist as tight as he could, fearing for his life more and more each passing second. Ford used Paci-Fire's horns to steer them from side to side, avoiding the large rocks and gaps in their way.

The bomb's timer was now at four minutes, each passing second another second closer to detonation. The twins were sledding down the mountain fast, but also cautiously. Ford made sure not to take any needlessly risky jumps or skips that were more likely to fail than to succeed, especially considering their 'sled' wasn't actually a sled. Stan continued to hold onto Ford for his life, with his own trust his brother becoming something to hesitate about each second.

"We're almost there!" Ford called out to Stan.

Stan looked down and could see they were nearing the bottom of the mountain, but saw that the Stan O' War would still be a good ten-minute run if they were reach the bottom now.

"No, we're not!" Stan told him. "The Stan O' War's still too far!"

"So, you're saying I should be riskier then?" Ford asked.

"Wait, what?!" Stan questioned panickedly. He was not entirely sure he heard Ford correctly, but began to panic at the idea that he had heard him right.

"Hang on!" Ford called out as he began aiming for a rock that looked like a ramp on the side of the mountain.

"Oh, dear god," Stan said to himself as he saw the ramp Ford was aiming for.

Ford then sled up the ramp and with their current momentum, the two went soaring through the air. Despite being relatively close to the bottom, they were still high enough for the momentum to truly carry them farther than they could imagine. They eventually skipped the edge between the bottom of the mountain and the ground itself, which meant they wouldn't land on the mountain's slope.

"HOLY CRAP!" Stan shouted once he came to this realization. "FORD, WE MISSED OUR SHOT!"

"I got this!" Ford reassured him.

Ford then began to aim for a small hill in the middle of the ground. He leaned forward, giving Paci-Fire's body some downward momentum so it would start leaning down as if it were to land on a slope. After a brief moment, Paci-Fire made perfect contact with the slope on the small hill and slid down toward the ground, sliding forward as its momentum slowly gave off and eventually put the twins at a complete stop.

Ford looked relatively calm, yet somewhat energized. He stepped off of Paci-Fire with a smug look of victory on his face. "Yes! We did it, Stanley!"

Stan, on the other hand, looked like he was about to have a heart attack. He took multiple deep breaths and tried to calm himself down, the experience proving too much for him.

"If I counted in my head correctly, we have just a little over three minutes to go!" Ford announced, he looked over in the direction of the Stan O' War and saw it was a running distance. "The Stan O' War's not too far either! C'mon, Stanley! We gotta move!"

Stan got off of Paci-Fire with a groan. "Jesus, Sixer. You gotta cut me some slack. This is a lot of pressure you're putting on me. I'm gonna need to take a break."

"You can take a break when we're not about to get bombed into another dimension," Ford told him as he began running in the boat's direction. "Now c'mon, let's move!"

* * *

The Stan O' War II was within mere yards away from Stan and Ford as they ran up to it. Ford jumped over the short gap in between the land and the boat onto the deck, while Stan followed shortly behind, but was a lot more out of breath than Ford was.

"Quick! I'll raise the anchor! You start the engine!" Ford ordered as he ran into the boat's cabin.

Stan took some deep breaths before slowly making his way toward the steering wheel. "Great. A job that doesn't require strength or speed or whatever. I can do that."

"C'mon, Stanley!" Ford rushed as he pulled up the lever to bring up the anchor. "We have a minute before that bomb blows and we're less than half a mile until we're out of its radius!"

"I got it! I got it!" Stan grabbed a key from his pocket and inserted it into to keyhole beside the wheel. He turned it, and the engine made startup noises. However, the engine failed. Stan raised an eyebrow in confusion and tried turning the key again, causing the engine to make noises yet again, but still failing. "Uh oh."

Ford quickly heard the failed noises ran up to Stan at the steering wheel. "Stanley?!"

"I'm trying!" he assured him as he continued turning the key. "It's not starting!" Ford pushed him aside and tried turning the key himself, but Stan was right. The engine wasn't starting. "You see?!"

"DAMMIT! The engine must've froze or...something!" Ford suggested.

"Well, what're we gonna do now?" Stan asked, getting panicked. "Swim?"

"No, I've already taken enough of your ironic suggestions for one day," Ford denied as he ran inside the cabin. He opened up a control panel and quickly pressed a big red button.

The boat suddenly began shaking, catching Stan off guard and causing him to fall on the deck. At that moment, the side of the Stan O' War ejected a large inflatable boat with a small engine into the water beside them, the boat almost instantaneously inflating. Stan got up in confusion as he looked down into the water at the inflatable boat.

"What the-?"

Ford then came rushing out of the cabin with two backpacks equipped as he jumped out of the Stan O' War and into the inflatable boat. He looked up at Stan, who was still aboard the Stan O' War, looking down at him in confusion.

"Come on, Stanley! Get on board! Quickly!" Ford ordered.

"Wait, what?!" Stan asked, shocked. "What about the Stan O' War?"

"We're leaving it behind," Ford told him flat-out with a hint of his own disappointment in his voice. "We don't have the time to fix it up now. So I pulled out the emergency boat with a one-time-use engine. It's the only way we're going to get out of here in time."

Stan looked hesitant to leave the Stan O' War behind, nervously glancing back and forth between the boat and his brother.

"Stanley, please! I'm not happy about losing the Stan O' War either, but this inflatable is our only way!" Ford told him. "And I'm not leaving without you!"

Stan looked at the boat once more before closing his eyes disappointedly. He then opened them and hopped onto the inflatable boat with Ford.

"Let's go," Stan told Ford with a disappointed tone and mournful look on his face.

Ford grabbed the pull cord of the engine and cranked it up. After a few cranks, the engine started and it sent them off fast. Stan stared back at the Stan O' War as they drifted further and further away from it.

Within a few seconds after, a white blast and flare emerged from the top of the mountain with a large boom soon after. The large, bright flare made it almost impossible for the twins to look directly at the explosion. The blast, however, was growing larger and larger and at a decently fast speed too. The blast eventually reached the Stan O' War and it began expanding over the ocean too.

Ford knew they had to have gotten out of the explosion radius based on the speed they were going at, but the blast still felt dangerously close to them. However, upon reaching the two-mile radius, the blast almost instantly imploded and created a secondary boom that sent the twins riding on a large wave for a brief moment before eventually crashing back into settling waters.

With the explosion complete, the two finally turned back and were able to see the results of the explosion. As expected, the land was absolutely decimated. It looked as though a chunk of the island had been nuked and they were looking at the results of the impact. About half of the island was just gone, including the mountain.

And including the Stan O' War.

"Well, there she goes," Stan said as he looked out at the remains of the island, mourning the loss of their old boat.

Ford walked over to Stan and pat him on the back. "It's alright, Stanley. I mean, at least  _we_ made it, right? We get to live another day in our own dimension. The mission's over! We get to head home now and finally see Dipper and Mabel again. Isn't that something?"

"Yeah," Stan nodded as he considered the idea. "I guess it is. But that boat was the last four years of our life. It was our childhood dream come true." He stared out into the distance for another good moment before turning around and walking over to the front of the boat. He sat down and looked down sadly. "But I guess you were right about what you said earlier. The dream's done. Time to move on."

Ford remained silent as he thought over Stan's words and how they applied back to what he had said earlier about moving on now that they had completed their childhood goals. He sighed and sat down across from him.

"I guess that's one way to look at it," Ford said.

"Whatever," Stan said, finally cracking a slight smile as he leaned back against the side of the raft. "You're right. The mission's over. Time to head home and see the kids again." He lied back and put his hands under his head in a relaxing way as he closed his eyes. "It's smooth sailing from here."

At that moment, the boat's engine started to make some strange noises before suddenly dying, which caused the boat's momentum to slow down. Stan opened his eyes and looked at the broken engine.

"I mean, you can fix that right?" Stan asked Ford as he glanced over at him.

Before Ford could answer, the engine itself immediately fell off the inflatable boat and into the ocean. The continued momentum of the boat pushed them too far away from it, making them unable to go back and get it.

"Not that, I can't," Ford said, lowering his eyebrows annoyedly at their crumbling conditions.

Stan sighed before sticking his hand out. "Can I get some of that emergency toast?"

Ford glared at Stan for a moment. "Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously. I'm starving!" Stan assured.

Ford sighed as he tapped a button on Meridian, which began to make a model of a piece of toast. He caught the finished toast in his hands and tossed it over to Stan, who caught it and took a bite out of it. Ford then pressed the button again and began making another piece of toast for himself.

Stan raised his piece of toast in the air like a glass of wine as he chewed. "To new beginnings, Stanford."

Ford held out his own piece of toast in his hand and raised it up the same way. "To new beginnings, Stanley."

They both then simultaneously took their own bites out of their pieces of toast, accepting their current fate- slowly sailing in the middle of the ocean on an inflatable boat to who knows where. And until they hit land, this was their life. Meridian was dead aside from its emergency toast function and the two hadn't packed any real tools within their backpacks that Ford had saved last minute from the Stan O' War.

What was important, however, was that the multiversal leak had been sealed and the creatures from the Nightmare Realm had been sent elsewhere. Their main mission had been finished. But the road home was beginning to look like their toughest journey yet.

* * *

 

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	15. Looking After The Wiser: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mabel convinces Dipper to help her look after Ryland’s little brother for the day. While trying to look after him, they realize he's not easy to please.

It was a particularly quiet evening at the Mystery Shack. It was a Saturday and the sun was starting to set. However, it seemed especially quieter than normal. Dipper didn't mind, however, as he sat in the chair of the living room writing in his journal while leaving the television on to occasionally glance at the 'Used to Be About History Channel', which was currently on commercial break.

He was satisfied with how his journal was turning out. He put in an entry for every summer adventure and even made sure to catalog all the newest findings of the summer, one including the fire-breathing dragon from the previous Sunday. While there hadn't been a crazy amount of new discoveries so far, he was happy with the current result. He couldn't wait to show Great Uncle Ford and see what he was to think of all his own catalogs.

Perhaps he could also help assist in finding out who was after the Shack in relation to the recent incident regarding Mr. Nessman. He's been doing his own research in the situation and was no closer to a conclusion than he was when he had started. Maybe Ford had connections of his own that might assist in his investigation.

"Hey, you!" a voice called out.

"What?" Dipper flinched at the sudden voice, glancing around the room. "Who said that?"

"Are you bored?"

Dipper raised an eyebrow. "Um, not really?"

"Then you should come over to the grand opening of the Gravity Falls Pier!"

Dipper then glanced over at the television and realized that it was just a commercial.

"Oh," he said, sighing annoyedly at the realization he was just speaking to a TV.

"That's right! The pier three years in the making is now officially open! We have fun games, great rides, and best of all, prizes!" the television voice-over said over a flash of different clips of people enjoying the fair. "And introducing our own rollercoaster built exclusively for the pier- The Gravedigger!"

An image of Gravedigger then appeared on the screen. It was a large black and red rollercoaster with a noticeably high initial drop and a bunch of loops. A clip of people riding the Gravedigger then proceeded to play on the screen, demonstrating the terrified reactions to the initial drop as they fell. The sounds of screaming repeated for a good while and the screams of the people on the ride slowly began overlapping one another to instinct a feeling horror in the viewer.

And it worked. Dipper stared at the screen in horror at the sight of the coaster and the screams only increased his growing anxiety. He was no fan of rollercoasters, not due to a fear of heights, but simply because the exhilaration and constant fear of imminent death always took over his senses and was too much for him. His stomach never acts too kindly either, no matter whether he has eaten or not. Granted, it's been several years since his last real ride, but the unpleasant memories of his past experiences would only further his lack of desire to ride one or even see one.

He quickly grabbed the remote and flipped the channel, flipping to the news. Successfully escaping the cursed commercial, he let out a sigh of relief. On the screen was now a clown juggling in front of a news anchor, who looked incredibly uninterested.

"Alright, thank you, Happy the Clown," the anchor said, gesturing off screen for the clown to walk off. Once he was out of the picture, the anchor looked forward again with a slightly more interested look. "Anyway, today is a big day for Gravity Falls citizens. The Gravity Falls Pier is officially opening up tonight and we have Shandra Jimenez on the scene."

"What?" Dipper asked, eyes suddenly bulging with fear.

"Thanks, Jones," Shandra said, who was now on screen in front of a view of the pier. The Gravedigger rollercoaster was also clear insight in the background. A man stood right beside her. "I'm currently standing with one of the engineers of the Gravedigger rollercoaster, which is the pier's biggest attraction," she said as she turned toward the man and pointed the microphone at him. "Tell me about the Gravedigger. Is it really as scary as it sounds?"

"Oh, most definitely," the engineer nodded. "When we were shooting footage for advertising, we brought in some real people to test out the rollercoaster and it scared them pretty bad. We had one teenager who actually got scared so bad that he needed to start going to therapy. And we also had one of our own engineers get stuck at the top drop during our first tests of the ride. He called it the most terrifying view of his life."

Dipper's eye began twitching after hearing those last two sentences. He immediately grabbed the remote again and shut off the television entirely. The pier was obviously big news all over the local television and rather than risking changing to another channel talking about it or advertising it, he wanted to avoid it entirely. He slumped back in his seat, shut his eyes, and took deep breaths, trying to calm himself down and get the thoughts and returning memories of rollercoasters out of his head.

"Dipper…"

Upon opening his eyes, he jumped his seat yet again at the sight of a floating object right in front of him. He calmed down a little bit and looked at the object, realizing that it was a small drone. He glanced around the room in confusion, wondering where it had come from before looking straight at it again.

"Um, hello?" he asked.

"Dipper..." an unidentifiable high-pitched voice said to him. "Dipper, it's me- Ford. I need your help."

"Great Uncle Ford?" Dipper asked suspiciously, not entirely convinced. "What is this?"

"I'm somewhere in the forest. I need your help!" the voice called out. "Bill's back!"

"What?!" Dipper asked, slightly panicking. He immediately calmed himself down and tried to think logically for a moment. "Wait, no. I don't believe it."

"What?!" the drone asked. "Why not?"

"This isn't Ford. This is probably Mabel or someone trying to play some sick prank on me," Dipper said as he picked up his journal and opened it.

"Dipper, you listen to me right now!" the drone called out. "This is your great uncle and I need your help! I'm in the forest with Stan! He's been possessed by Bill! Please help!"

"Yeah, yeah," Dipper brushed off in disbelief, beginning to write in his journal again. "If you're really my great uncle, then you need to come up with a good way to prove it."

The drone stood still for a moment before quietly flew in front of Dipper's face.

"My boy, I'm telling you," the drone said. "You need to run into the woods now and find Stan and I before it's too late. You're our only hope, Mason."

Dipper's eyes bulged as he promptly dropped his journal and pen from his hands. His eyes glanced over at the drone in shock, which simply hovered in front of him.

* * *

The front door of the Mystery Shack burst open as Dipper began running as fast as he could in a hurry toward the woods with a backpack equipped and his journal in hand.

"I'M COMING, GREAT UNCLE FORD!" he shouted out as he ran straight into the woods.

However, witnessing from the roof of the Shack were Mabel and Ryland, who both burst out laughing at the sight of Dipper running into the woods. Mabel held a microphone in her hand while Ryland held a controller and began playing with the joystick, which soon brought back the same drone that Dipper had encountered. He grabbed it and placed it down beside him.

As the two calmed down from their laughter, Ryland began to look a tad unsure as he glanced over at Mabel. "Ya know, I'm all for a good prank, but is this too much? Like, he's not gonna spend all day running through the forest, right?"

Mabel thought about it for a moment. "Nah, I put a few different signs around to let him know it was a prank. And Dipper knows how to take a joke." She then looked away for a moment to think about that last statement before turning back toward him. " _Most_  of the time," she clarified. "But, just in case, I'll take the blame for all of it. I did tell you his real name after all."

"So that  _is_  his real name, huh?" Ryland asked.

"Yeah, I really shouldn't have told you though," she admitted. "He doesn't really like it when I tell others without him knowing. Or generally, anyone knowing it at all."

"Why? Mason's a cool name," Ryland asked. "Seems like a weird thing to be self-conscious about."

"Dipper's self-conscious about everything," Mabel shrugged. She then glanced over at Ryland's drone equipment and grabbed his controller, beginning to play around with it. "Anyways, so this stuff is all your dad's?"

"Yep," Ryland nodded with a proud smile. "He works for one of the top drone makers in the world. This is one of the newest prototype models that they're working on."

Mabel then accidentally pushing the main joystick all the way forward, which suddenly sent the drone flying forward at a fast speed. The drone flew forward too fast for her to control immediately and so it flew straight into to the forest on a downward spiral.

_CRASH!_

" _GAH!_ " Dipper's voice yelped from the forest before a series of rolling noises were heard along with various winces of pain.

Mabel cupped her hands around her mouth in shock while Ryland looked on in the direction she had sent the drone with his own look of horror. Glancing over at his reaction, she began to feel her own face redden from embarrassment.

" _DAMMIT, MABEL!_ " Dipper's voice suddenly echoed angrily from the forest.

"Well, guess I  _am_  taking all the blame for this," she joked as she then gave an awkward chuckle. Her smile quickly faded as she looked on at Ryland's unchanged look of horror. She frowned guiltily as she looked away from him. "Sorry about the drone."

Ryland sighed but pushed out a chuckle through his slight irritation. "It's alright. I'm just glad I didn't bring in the bigger models."

"I'll pay for it!" Mabel offered, grabbing her sparkled miniature purse. "How much did it cost?"

"Well, it was a prototype," Ryland began. "So about a couple hundred thousand."

Mabel stared at him blankly for a moment before slowly closing her purse. "Nevermind, then."

Ryland chuckled before putting his hand on her shoulder gratefully. "It's cool, Mabel. I'll just call my dad and tell him I was just being irresponsible. He'll be mad, but it's best to face consequences head-on than prolong them. Ya know?"

Mabel smiled warmly at him as he walked away from her and back inside the Shack, taking his phone out of his pocket and presumably dialing up his father. She sighed dreamily before sitting down on the edge of the roof.

"What a guy," she said dreamily. "He knows how to set an example."

At that same moment, she spotted Dipper emerging from the woods. He was limping and all of his clothes were roughed up and covered in dirt. He held his journal in one hand and held a piece of paper in his other hand that read 'GOTCHA! -Mabel'. He looked up at her with a look face of pure annoyance as he pointed to the paper.

"Oh, wait!" she said to herself as she realized something. "He was setting an example for me! Dammit, Ryland! For someone so cute, you're also too philosophical."

Realizing she needed to confront Dipper about the prank, she hopped down from the roof by climbing down the edges of the pole beside the wall keeping the roof stood. She then kicked herself off the wall and landed on the ground before standing up from her crouched stance. She walked over to the visibly angered Dipper as he continued to limp toward the Shack.

"Geez, bro-bro," Mabel said, surprised by how hurt he appeared. "You didn't break your leg, did you?"

"Nope," he shook his head. "After your drone smashed into me, I fell and tumbled down a small slope beside a pond where there also happened to be a few thorned roses bushes where my leg landed," he explained, gesturing to his right leg, however, his jeans covered any wounds he may have received. "I haven't checked yet, but I'm pretty sure my leg is bleeding." He then crumbled up the 'Gotcha' paper and threw it on the ground aggravatedly. "Oh, and way to use our returning Great Uncles in danger as a joke."

Mabel sighed and rubbed her shoulder guiltily seeing how much pain she unintentionally put her brother in. "I'm sorry, bro-bro. I guess I did go a little far with this one."

"A little?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, I mean, I was just hanging out with Ryland and...ya know…" Mabel said, continuing to rub her shoulder awkwardly.

"So this was his idea?" Dipper asked.

"No, no!" Mabel denied. "It was mine. It's just when he told me that he liked pranks, I kind of took that as an opportunity to try to show how good of a prankster I can be," she tried to justify.

"Well, as you can see…" Dipper began as he gestured toward his appearance. "...it was a superb prank, sis. Absolutely hilarious," he said sarcastically with an eye roll.

"Alright, geez," Mabel said, raising her arms defensively. "I said I was sorry."

"You know, you've been spending a lot of time with Ryland since we got here," Dipper said as he pulled a leaf out of his hair.

"Well, duh," Mabel said. "I'm spending time trying to get to know him! I always spend a lot of time with people I just met! You know this."

"Yeah, but with Ryland, it seems like a little too much time, don't you think?" Dipper asked, crossing his arms suspiciously.

"He's a good guy," Mabel casually answered, turning her back toward him. "What else can I say?"

"DAMMIT, DAD!" Ryland's voice angrily shouted from the Shack, grabbing the twins' attention.

The two glanced over at the Shack to see him bitterly stomping outside and putting his phone away as he began making his way toward his bike.

"That sounds like something a good guy would say," Dipper said sarcastically.

"Oh please," Mabel said, rolling her eyes. "He's probably just in trouble for breaking his dad's drone and he's a little mad about the punishment."

Ryland walked his bike over toward the twins and stopped in front of Mabel. He sighed irritatedly. "Well, I just told him."

"Didn't go so well, huh?" Mabel asked with concern.

"He's grounding me from going to BMX park with my friends tomorrow," Ryland said, dragging his hand down his face in annoyance. "I wouldn't mind any other day, but tomorrow is semifinals for a big BMX tournament. Instead, he's putting me in charge of my little brother while he and mom are going out of town to attend some convention for drones."

"Aww, babysitting your brother?" Mabel said, pressing her cheeks together. "That's adorable."

" _NO!_ " Ryland denied. "My brother? Adorable? Absolutely not. He's the most annoying little brother ever."

"C'mon, you're just saying that because he's your brother," Mabel scoffed.

"Yeah, he's probably no more annoying than Mabel and her pranks," Dipper intervened, giving Mabel a daring glare to which she just rolled her eyes in response.

"I wish I was 'just saying that', but no. I really mean it," Ryland continued to emphasize. "He spends all day with his eyes glued to his computer, which is actually the most obnoxiously loud computer that I've ever heard. And every time I complain about it to our parents, they always defend him for whatever reason."

"Yeesh," Mabel said, frowning sympathetically and guiltily as she continued to realize this was all her fault. "Sounds rough."

"Yeah, well, rough is what my Sunday is about to be," Ryland sighed before beginning to slowly walk off with his bike again. "Anyways, I'll see you guys later."

"Good luck, man," Dipper waved as he picked a stick out of his hair with his other hand.

"Ryland, wait!" Mabel called out to him, holding her arm out. "What if  _we_  took care of your little brother for you?"

"Wait,  _we?_ " Dipper restated, raising an eyebrow.

"If your parents are out of town tomorrow, then maybe we could just look after him at your house while you go to semifinals with your friends!" Mabel suggested enthusiastically, while simultaneously ignoring Dipper's questioning attitude. "Seeing as it's so important to you, it'd be a shame for you to have to miss a shot at getting to finals."

"Again,  _we?_ " Dipper reiterated.

"Really? You'd do that for me?" Ryland asked as he cracked a smile as he began walking back up to her.

"Of course!" Mabel assured. "You're a friend. It's what friends do."

"Oh man," Ryland stated happily. "That's so awesome of you. I'll make sure to pay you both by the end of the weekend."

Dipper gave a slightly irritated sigh as he crossed his arms. "Well, that's something at the very least," he whispered to himself.

"It's not about the money, Ryland," Mabel then told him, shaking her head. "It's about doing something for a friend out of the kindness of your heart. You don't need to pay us."

"Wait, what?!" Dipper exclaimed as he heard Mabel's words.

"Seriously? You'd actually help me for free?" Ryland asked, smile warming.

"Absolutely," Mabel nodded, closing her eyes cheerfully. "You can count on us."

She was suddenly caught off guard as she felt herself being pulled into an embrace. Upon opening her eyes, she immediately realized Ryland had suddenly hugged her. The realization caused her face to warm up substantially and she was too stunned to hug him back.

Ryland pulled back from the embrace and walked back toward his bike, which he had dropped on the ground. He hopped on and got a grip on the handlebars, preparing himself to pedal off. Before doing so, he looked back at her and smiled brightly.

"You're something else, Pines," he said gratefully before turning forward and riding off.

Mabel was still somewhat stunned by the hug, but she stared forward and watched him ride away until he was out of sight. She smiled blushingly and gave out another sigh.

" _Ehem!_ "

Breaking out of her slight trance, she turned toward her side and noticed Dipper giving her an annoyed look with his arms crossed.

"So you just sold our Sunday to someone we still hardly know so we could babysit his supposedly annoying little brother, and we're not even getting paid?" Dipper asked, dumbfounded by Mabel's decisions.

"Um,  _you_  barely know him," Mabel corrected. "Who's been spending most of her time getting to know him?" she asked as she began pointing fingers at herself in an intentionally exaggerated manner. "This girl!"

"Right," Dipper said with an eye roll. "And it didn't occur to you once that you have never babysat anyone before in your life?" Dipper reminded her. "Like...ever?"

"I've spent the last four years of my life taking care of a pig, Dipper," Mabel reminded him. "How much harder could a child be?"

Before Dipper could respond to her, she was suddenly tackled down to the ground by Waddles, who began repeatedly licking her face excitedly. Completely unbothered, she started giggling loudly and rolling around on the floor with him. She picked him up and held him above herself, shaking him around.

"Who's the best pig in the world?" Mabel asked playfully. She kept giggling as she then started rubbing her face against Waddles'.

Dipper looked down at her and gave yet another annoyed sigh, now completely done with her for the day. He began limping back to the Shack, leaving Mabel on the ground to play with Waddles. In the last ten minutes, he's been pranked, injured, ignored, and generally disregarded. He was tired and just wanted to wash off and go to bed, remaining unenthusiastic about the weekend ahead.

* * *

It was a Sunday morning and Dipper was driving Soos' pickup truck through the streets of the town on their way to Ryland's house. He looked particularly tired and tepid as he drove, whereas Mabel was happily humming as she did her usual makeup right beside him in the passenger seat. Upon finishing, she put away all of her things back into her purse and threw it back down beside her feet. She smiled as she looked out the window.

"Look at us, bro-bro," she said excitedly. "Us driving through Gravity Falls all on our own! I don't remember  _this_ happening four summers ago! Ah, how time has passed."

Dipper didn't respond and kept his eyes focused on the road ahead of them. She then glanced over at him and noticed how lukewarm he appeared.

"You okay, bro?" Mabel asked, raising an eyebrow in concern.

"Yeah, no, I agree, sis," Dipper began. "Since I have my license, I can drive us wherever we need to go in town. Even if that means needlessly getting up at 6 AM on a  _Summer Sunday morning_  to get ready to babysit a kid."

"Are you still bitter about not getting paid for this?" Mabel asked, getting annoyed that Dipper still hasn't gotten over the situation since last night.

"No, I'm still bitter about you dragging me into this," Dipper corrected her. "Not getting paid at the very least is just the icing on the cake."

"C'mon, Dipper," Mabel tried to coax him. "It'll be fun! Just because neither of us has ever babysat before doesn't mean this is going to be horrible. We're dealing with Ryland's little brother, not ten-year-old Gideon."

"You're comparing someone we've never met to someone we used to have objectively terrible experiences with," Dipper responded. "And apparently the only info on this kid we were given was A- he loves his computer, and B- he's annoying. That doesn't make me hopeful."

"Well, I still think that maybe Ryland's just exaggerating a  _little_ bit just because he's his brother," Mabel told him. "Maybe he's actually really nice and sweet. And like you mentioned, he likes computers, so maybe he's also nerdy just like you!" She then looked out the window again, her eyebrows tilting a bit nervously at the thought. "Let's hope it's less of that, though."

"Yeah, ' _Let's'_ ," Dipper quoted sarcastically.

He then took a turn and pulled the truck up into the driveway of a house in a normal neighborhood. He parked in front of a garage and shut off the truck. Dipper exited the car and closed the door behind him. Mabel leaned over into the backseat and grabbed a backpack and placed the strap on her back before grabbing her purse and getting out of the car as well. Dipper then pressed a button on the keys and locked up the truck before walking beside Mabel up to the front door of the house.

Mabel knocked on the door and stood back. The two stood there for a moment before they heard the door being promptly unlocked. It opened up and a shirtless Ryland stood right in front of him with a toothbrush in his mouth. Overwhelmed by his unexpected appearance, Mabel's face immediately flushed red at the sight of him.

"Oh, hey guys!" he greeted anxiously as he grabbed onto his toothbrush and continued brushing his teeth.

"H-hi!" Mabel stuttered, trying to keep a focused eye contact with him, but kept glancing back and forth between him and his shirtless build.

"Hey, man," Dipper casually waved, though he was somewhat put off by his appearance as well.

"Come in, come in!" he told them hurriedly as he ran into the house's kitchen, which was in open view from the front door.

The twins casually walked inside and looked around, with Dipper grabbing the doorknob and closing it behind them. Back in the kitchen, Ryland grabbed a cup from a dish rack right beside him and filled it up with water from the tap. He took a sip of water and washed it around his mouth before gargling and spitting it out into the sink as well.

He looked back at the twins, who watched him from beside the front door. "Sorry for how I look and me running around everywhere," Ryland told the two.

"It's okay!" Mabel told him. "I, I mean,  _we_ don't mind!"

Ryland then ran over to his fridge and began rummaging through it before grabbing a gallon of milk and chugging it. He then put the cap back on it and threw it back into the fridge, before slamming it shut.

"I accidentally had my alarm clock set an hour later than it was supposed to be and so I ended up getting up not too long ago. Now I gotta be outta here in about five minutes!" Ryland explained to them as he ran out of the kitchen. "Anyways, let me just get a shirt on. Be right back!"

He then sprinted right up the stairs that were in front of them, to which Mabel stared right at his bare back as he went up. She noticed a series of large, light marks on his otherwise tan skin. Through memory, she quickly realized those were other scars he had obtained from his history of BMX biking that he had mentioned to her once before. While they were faded, the general size of the scars in comparison to the one he had shown her under his forearm told her that he had been in much worse accidents than she led herself to believe.

Dipper glanced into the kitchen and at the fridge for a moment before turning back to Mabel. "Whether it's because he's in a rush or not, if he offers any sort of capped-up drink, I'm not accepting."

"Please," Mabel rolled her eyes as she crossed her arms. "I've been drinking straight from the carton since grade school and you've never complained once."

Dipper's eyes bulged at this revelation. "Wait, YOU  _HAVE?!_ "

Mabel raised an eyebrow in surprise as she looked over at him. "You never knew?"

The two then redirected their attention toward Ryland as he quickly returned downstairs with a brown and yellow striped tank top. "Either of you guys hungry? Thirsty? I got a lot in the fridge if either of you w-"

"Nope, we're good," Dipper interrupted, causing Mabel to glare at him.

"Are you sure?" Ryland asked.

"Positive. Where's the kid?" Dipper asked, wanting to just get to the point of their arrival in the first place.

"Oh, right!" Ryland realized. "God, how could I forget?" he said as he walked back over to the staircase. "YO, EVAN!"

A brief moment passed before any type of response was returned.

"WHAT?" a young voice called back from upstairs.

"Come downstairs!" Ryland called out.

"Why? What do you want?" the voice called back down.

"Just do it! Now!" Ryland demanded.

" _Ugh!_ " the voice exclaimed exasperatedly.

Footsteps were then heard stomping down the hallway upstairs. Ryland turned back to the twins. "Sorry, he can be pretty stubborn."

Suddenly, a little boy appeared from upstairs and quickly came down the stairs up to Ryland. "What is it?" he asked impatiently. His eyes then glanced to his left and noticed Dipper and Mabel standing there. "Who are they?"

"Evan, these are my friends from my job, Dipper, and Mabel Pines," Ryland introduced. He then looked over at the twins. "And guys, this is my brother, Evan Reeds."

Evan was a young boy whose height reached about Ryland's elbow. Even though he was Ryland's brother, his appearance differed heavily in comparison to where you couldn't ever tell on your own if they were related. His hair was a dark brown, short, and combed to the side. He wore a white collar shirt with a black tie. He also appeared to wear black dress pants and black dress shoes. To top off what almost looked like a stereotypical nerd-look, he even wore large glasses.

"Evan," Mabel restated as she looked at him. "Hi! I'm Mabel! My brother Dipper and I are going to be looking after you today while your brother's out!"

"What?!" Evan questioned in surprise. He turned toward Ryland. "But dad said you couldn't go BMXing with your friends today."

"Pfft, what makes you think that I'm going BMXing?" Ryland asked him. "I actually have, uh, a... _study group_  to attend to today."

"A study group?" Evan asked, unconvinced. "For what? It's summer."

"Oh, right," Ryland said, realizing the flaw in his lie. "Well, that's why I need a study group. To get better at lying!"

"You realize how much you're giving yourself away, right?" Evan asked, crossing his arms.

"Yeah, I know," Ryland admitted as he turned over to Dipper and Mabel. "So make sure he never gets his hands on a phone." He turned back toward Evan. "Anyways, these guys are gonna look after you while I'm gone."

"Why? I'm twelve-years-old," Evan reminded him. "I don't need babysitters."

"Please. I've heard the noise your computer makes," Ryland told him. "We need someone watching to make sure you don't burn the house down."

"This is stupid," Evan said, turning back toward the stairs. "I'm going back to my room."

"Oh, no!" Ryland denied, grabbing Evan's arm and holding him back from going up the steps. "Like I said, we're trying to prevent fires. You're going to stay down here with the Pines until I get back tonight."

"Are you kidding?" Evan asked, getting aggravated. "I'm not gonna burn down the house with my computer, you moron!"

"Oh, yeah,  _surrre_. I believe you," Ryland said sarcastically, pulling Evan back from the steps. Evan clenched his fists angrily as Ryland began walking up the stairs. He looked back at him. "Stay down there. I'm gonna lock up your room so that's not an issue for them."

"What?! No!" Evan exclaimed, attempting to run after him before having his shirt grabbed and held back by Mabel.

"Hey, hey!" Mabel tried to coax. "Don't worry! You won't need that ol' computer with us!"

"Let go of me!" Evan dismissed trying to yank himself away from her grasp.

At that moment, the sound of a click then echoed from upstairs. Ryland then proceeded back down the stairs whistling as he spun a key ring that had only one key around his finger. He then tossed the key over to Mabel, who caught it.

"That's the key to Evan's room," Ryland told her. "Just hold onto that and make sure he doesn't get his hands on it."

"No problem-o," Mabel nodded, stuffing the key into her purse, much to Evan's dismay.

"Alright. Now that all of that is out of the way, let me get out of here," Ryland said, clapping his hands together. He grabbed a bike helmet from the kitchen counter and opened the door. He walked out a few steps and walked out to his bike, leaned over against the wall of the house.

"So wait, you just leave your bike out here in the open?" Mabel asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It's a pretty safe neighborhood, honestly," Ryland told her as he hopped on top of it and put on his helmet. "I think out of all the places I've lived, this is the least likely spot I could ever get my bike stolen." He then smiled at the two. "Anyway, I just wanted to say once more that I appreciate you both doing this for me."

"It's nothing," Mabel assured him.

"Yeah, except could maybe we can reignite the topic of payment?" Dipper suggested. Mabel promptly elbowed him in the stomach, causing him to wince in pain.

"He's joking!" Mabel told Ryland with a smile. "Now go on! There's not gonna be anyone more upset than I will be if you're late for semifinals!"

"Then I can't let you down," Ryland told her with a chuckle. He waved once more before riding off on his bike out of the driveway and onto the streets.

Mabel then closed the door and locked it. "Alright, Evan! What do you want to do first?" she asked as she and Dipper turned back around. However, they quickly noticed that he wasn't anywhere in the room. "Evan?"

The two suddenly heard banging-like noises as well as grunting coming from upstairs. The twins glanced at one another before quickly running upstairs.

Not too far down the hallway, they quickly spotted Evan repeatedly turning a locked doorknob, presumably trying to enter his bedroom. After a moment, he spotted the two standing right next to him, watching him.

He then looked over at Mabel. "Can you unlock my room, please?"

"Now, you know I can't do that," Mabel said, placing her hands on her waist.

"Yes, you can!" Evan exclaimed. "Ryland gave you the key!"

"Look, I know your brother having us look after you is a bit terrifying," Mabel began. "But there's nothing to worry about!"

"Except I'm not worrying," Evan told her. "There's literally no reason for you two to have to be here right now. I'm twelve-years-old. I can handle being on my own. If you would just unlock my room, you could literally just go home and things would be alright here."

"Well, your brother doesn't want me to do that," Mabel told him. "So that's not happening."

" _UGH!_ " Evan shouted angrily as he began twisting the locked doorknob again.

"Hey now!" Mabel said, pulling Evan away from the door. "Come on! It won't be that bad! Look what I brought!" Mabel then pulled her backpack from over her shoulder and set it on the ground. Upon opening it, she then pulled out a stack of boxes for different board games. "Ta-daa!"

"Board games? Seriously?" Evan asked, unexcited.

"C'mon! I brought all my favorite ones from when I was your age!" Mabel told him. "Look!  _Battlechutes & Ladderships!_  _Necronomiconopoly!_   _Connect Forty-Four!_  C'mon, you gotta love at least one of these!"

Evan sighed irritatedly. "I guess we can do  _Necronomiconopoly_ ," he suggested.

* * *

In the middle of the living room floor, the  _Necronomiconopoly_  board and cards were laid out, and the three sat around it. There were a few metal player pieces on the board.

"Alright, before we start, we need to pick our player piece," Mabel told the two. She grabbed a piece that resembled the head of Cthulhu. "I call dibs on Cat-haloo because he looks like an octopus and I think they're adorable!"

"It's  _Cthulhu_ , Mabel," Dipper corrected, using his own personal knowledge of Lovecraftian lore.

"Gazuntite," Mabel responded.

Dipper sighed in response to Mabel before turning back toward the board. He thought for a moment as he looked at the various Lovecraftian pieces. "This isn't an easy choice, but today, I have a good feeling that Dagon will bring me to victory."

Evan looked at the pieces and picked an ordinary sword-looking piece.

Dipper raised an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to be?"

"I don't know? A normal sword, I guess?" Evan shrugged, examining the piece. "Do I have to pick one of these other pieces?"

"Well, I mean, it would be preferred-" Dipper began.

"Dipper, please!" Mabel whispered to him. "Just let him use the sword!"

Dipper sighed. "I really need to find people who actually appreciate the source of this craft to play this with."

"I guess I'll go first!" Mabel announced. She grabbed the two black dice and rolled them, landing on a two. "Aw, only two?" She grabbed her Cthulhu piece and jumped two places from the start and landed on  _Immunity Chest_. She promptly grabbed a card from the stack and read it. "'Move all the way to GO. Collect 200 Necronomicoins!' Huh, that was easy." She moved her piece back two pieces to the start and took some Necronomicoins from the box.

"That was just luck," Dipper told her, grabbing the two black dice. "Watch a Lovecraftian expert show you how it's done." He rolled the dice, landing on a solid seven. He moved his piece all the way to  _Chance_. "Alright, Chance!" He grabbed a card from the stack and excitedly prepared to read it. "'You died. You lose.' Wait, what?"

Mabel burst out laughing. "Wow! Way to show us how it's done, Mr. Expert!"

"I don't get it," Dipper said, examining the card. "I don't remember this being a card in this game. What's the lore behind this card? It can't seriously be as simple as 'You Lose'! That makes no sense!"

"Guess Dagon ain't so lucky after all," Mabel jabbed, causing Dipper to groan. She looked over at Evan. "Alright, Evan. Your turn!"

"Actually, I gotta use the bathroom real quick," Evan told the two, getting up from the floor.

"Oh, uh, that's fine! Do what you gotta do!" Mabel nodded.

Evan nodded back before running upstairs, but Dipper watched him suspiciously. He then turned back to Mabel, who was counting her Necronomicoins.

"Mabel, don't you think we should watch him?" Dipper asked.

"Watch him use the bathroom?" Mabel asked, somewhat put off by Dipper's suggestion.

"What? No!" Dipper denied. "I mean, go watch him to make sure he doesn't do anything, ya know, suspicious."

"Dipper, his room is locked and I have the key," Mabel reminded him, patting her purse right beside her. "What could he do up there that's suspicious?" She then looked back down at the board and noticed Evan's sword piece was missing. "Hey, what happened to his player piece?"

At that moment, the two heard clicking noises coming from upstairs. The clicking noises were soon followed by a couple of grunts.

Upstairs, Evan was on his knees attempting to pick the lock to his room with the sword player piece. He continuously moved the piece within the lock, trying his hardest to twist it through properly and get the knob to turn.

"Come on…" he said quietly to himself as continued to attempt to unlock the door.

" _Ehem!_ "

He turned behind to the side and spotted Mabel standing with her arms crossed disappointedly at him, along with Dipper standing casually behind her.

"Can you please just open the door so I can use my computer?!" Evan pleaded.

"I already told you," Mabel began. "Your brother said-"

"I don't care what my brother said!" Evan exclaimed as he got up from his knees. "He's a selfish, oblivious idiot who has no idea about the things I do!"

"Don't talk about him like that!" Mabel defended. "Firstly, he's not selfish. He took responsibility for me accidentally crashing your dad's drone and fessed up to him instead of trying to hide it."

"And he's an idiot for not waiting until after today to tell him instead of getting himself into trouble before the day of his semifinals!" Evan disputed. "If he hadn't done that, then neither of you would have to be here in the first place!"

"We already don't have to be here!" Mabel told him, getting somewhat aggravated herself. "I offered to help look after you so he could still go!"

"Well, then maybe you're just as dimwitted as he is!" he shouted back.

Mabel gasped. "That's it! I've had enough of this attitude of yours! You're getting a timeout!"

"Jesus Christ, Mabel! He's  _twelve!_ " Dipper reminded her.

"Well, what do you suggest then?" Mabel asked, turning toward him.

"I don't know, but definitely not this!" Dipper told her, using his arms to gesture toward the ongoing dispute between her and Evan.

Mabel sighed as she shut her eyes and rubbed the sides of her head, trying to calm herself down and think. "Alright! I have an idea!"

"Is it finally opening up the door to my room?" Evan asked hopefully.

"No, it's actually getting as far away from your room as possible!" Mabel told him.

Evan's hopefulness immediately died upon hearing this. "Lovely," he said sarcastically.

"You bet!" Mabel nodded excitedly, not immediately catching his sarcasm. "Grab your keys, Dipper! Instead of spending all day cooped up in this house, let's go out and have some  _real_ fun!"

She then grabbed Dipper by the arm and ran downstairs, pulling him along with her and leaving Evan behind upstairs. He looked back at the door to his room and sighed disappointedly before walking down the hall, slowly following behind the two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to artmageddonunicon for the fantastic Evan design.


	16. Looking After The Wiser: Part 2

Dipper and Mabel entered the front of Soos' truck, Dipper taking the wheel again. A brief moment after, Evan soon followed and entered the backseat of the truck, sitting in the middle. His face displayed nothing but a lack of desire to be there.

Mabel turned her head to look at Evan in the backseat. "Alright, Evan. We're gonna give you the choice of what we do first. So, what do you want to do?"

"Go back inside and use my computer," Evan replied instantly.

Mabel sighed. "C'mon, Evan. I'm really trying here. Any place you want to go and I mean  _any_  place in town  _besides_  your house and room. Any fun place you desire. Where do you wanna go?"

Evan groaned as he crossed his arms annoyedly, looking over to the side in annoyance. He thought for a moment before looking back up at her. "Alright, fine. I know where we can go."

"Awesome!" Mabel said cheerfully. "Lay it on us!"

"The library," he replied with a daring look.

Mabel gazed at him for a moment, processing his response. Dipper even looked up from the wheel and looked over at her in surprise of the response as well. Mabel then glanced at him as if she wasn't sure how to answer for a moment. Eventually, she just turned back to Evan.

"The library?" Mabel asked him, raising an eyebrow. She then gave a slightly hopeful look. "Is that, like, the name of a park or something?"

"What? No," Evan denied. "I mean the Gravity Falls Public Library. Who names a park 'the library'?"

"Any fun place in town and you want to go to...the library?" Mabel asked, still incredibly put off by this suggestion.

"The library's fun," Evan told her. "There are books and articles.  _Computers…_ "

"Yeesh. There's someone other than Dipper who thinks books are a source of 'fun'?" Mabel asked, Dipper rolling his eyes in response. "Well, it's obvious that being stuck in that room of yours all day like your brother said has kept you unexposed to actual activities. So how about we go places where we can have some  _real_  fun!"

"Like you know anything about having real fun," Evan said, stubbornly crossing his arms again.

"Excuse me?" Mabel asked, shocked by the assumption that she doesn't know how to have fun. "I am Mabel Pines! I am the Master of Fun."

"Yet playing board games was your first idea of 'having fun'," Evan reminded her.

Mabel glared at him for a good moment, her eye beginning to twitch aggravatedly. Part of her was getting really annoyed with how Evan continued to talk back, but another part of her knew he was right. Instead of retaliating, she just faced forward in her seat.

"You're contemplating between arguing and accepting that he's right, aren't you?" Dipper asked her, leaning his elbow against the car door.

"Yep," Mabel nodded.

"And now you're gonna try to prove a point that you're fun, aren't you?" Dipper asked.

"Yep."

* * *

The first stop was the Gravity Falls Bowling Alley. The three of them were inside beside their own lane, putting on their bowling shoes. Dipper was sat down in a seat to the side while Mabel was beside Evan. While he didn't necessarily mind, he was well aware at that point that he wasn't really there for much besides being Mabel's driver for the day.

"Ah, the Gravity Falls Bowling Alley," Mabel stated as she finished tying her bowling shoes and stood up. She then nudged Evan. "Have you ever gone bowling before?"

"No," Evan said as he finished tying his own bowling shoes.

"Well, you'll know that there's no better way to start off a day of fun," Mabel told him as she picked up a bowling ball from the rack and handed it over to him.

Evan took the bowling ball in his hands and was caught off guard by how heavy it was at that moment. Once he got a grasp on the weight of it, he put his fingers in the three holes and walked over to the lane. He hadn't played before, although he obviously knew he had to aim for the pins. However, he stared forward for a moment as if he wasn't quite sure he knew how to do that properly either.

"Go on!" Mabel cheered, clapping her hands together. "You got this!"

He then ran a few steps forward and rolled the ball down the lane. It was a clear miss, however, as it slowly rolled straight into the gutter and out of the way of the lane.

"Ouch," Mabel said.

The score screen counted the miss and Evan lost his first shot. He sighed disappointedly but was well aware he was to miss the shot from the start.

"I mean, I've never played before," Evan said, turning toward her. "What do you expect?"

"Yeah, you're right," Mabel nodded. "I should've shown you a demonstration on how you roll." She walked over to the rack and grabbed a ball for herself. She looked back at Evan as she walked over to the lane. "Here. I'll score one for you. You just watch me."

Evan crossed his arms and sighed, still not gaining any interest from the activity. Nonetheless, he watched as she wished.

Mabel studied the complete set of pins at the end of the lane for a moment, holding the ball up in front of her. She then took a few steps straight forward and gave the ball a solid roll down the lane. The ball rolled straight down the middle, looking to be a perfect shot. It hit all of the middle pins, leaving the front leftmost and rightmost pins. A perfect split.

"Dang it! So close!" Mabel shouted somewhat frustratedly. She then turned back to Evan. "Oh well. At least those points go to you. Now, do you know how to play?"

"Sure. With that demonstration, I may as well be considered a master now," Evan said sarcastically as he walked back toward his seat.

"Dipper, it's your turn!" Mabel reminded him.

Dipper looked up at the screen and saw the scoreboard displayed the name 'DIP' on the screen.

"Alright, then," he said as he stood up from his seat and began walking over to the bowling ball rack. He picked up a ball and turned his head back toward Evan as he walked over to the lane. "Don't worry, Evan. I'm not too great at bowling either."

"True. It really doesn't take luck to be better than Dipper," Mabel jabbed, looking over at Evan, who didn't seem to care for her humor.

"Yeah, yeah," Dipper said, rolling his eyes. "At least he'll know he's not alone here."

He then took a step forward and lunged his arm forward, giving the ball a solid roll. Much to his luck and shock, the ball rolled straight down the middle and knocked all the pins down, resulting in a clean strike.

Dipper gasped and his mouth hung wide open, struck with utter disbelief at what just happened.

" _WOO!_ " Mabel cheered, also surprised by Dipper's successful strike. "Go, bro!"

"I-I...strike!" Dipper stuttered through his disbelief before finally comprehending the situation and putting on a smile. "STRIKE! I got a strike! HAHA!"

Dipper's cheers were then beginning to attract subtle attention from people throughout the rest of the alley. Mabel took a look around at some of the odd looks others were giving him.

"Alright, bro. Bring it down a notch, would you?" Mabel said, gesturing him to calm down a bit. "It's just a strike. Good job, but it's not  _that_  big of a deal."

"Yeah, especially since the scoreboard didn't even count it," Evan agreed, pointing up at the score screen.

"Wait, what?!" Dipper asked, his excitement halting.

He ran over beside the two and looked up at the score screen. The screen displayed the strike as a gutter shot and claimed it to be his first try out of two.

"Ooh, well that sucks," Mabel said as she examined the screen, sympathetically looking over at Dipper. "Better luck next time, I guess."

"What?! No!" Dipper frustratedly refused. "That's so stupidly broken! I'm not taking that!"

He turned around behind him and saw a teenage worker in the alley walking by. He quickly ran up to him.

"Hey man," Dipper greeted. He then pointed back toward the scoreboard. "Look, I just scored a strike and the score didn't give me points for it."

"Um, that, like, never happens here," the teenage worker told him, raising an eyebrow.

"What? It just did!" Dipper exclaimed. "Right now! It did it to me!"

"Alright, well, what do you want me to do about it?" the teenage worker asked, completely disinterested in his problem.

"Uhh, fix it? Get me the points I was robbed of?" Dipper asked.

The teenager facepalmed himself and dragged his hand down his face annoyedly. He then turned away and began walking off away from him. "Dude, just suck it up and get good at the game. If you got a strike once, doing it again shouldn't be hard."

"B-but, I'm not good at bowling! Or any sport! It was a lucky shot! I need the points!" Dipper tried to justify as the worker carelessly continued to walk off.

"Poor Dipper," Mabel said as she watched back from the lane.

Dipper walked back to the lane moodily, taking a seat down without a word. Mabel looked up at the screen and noticed it was still his turn.

"Sorry about what happened, Dipper," Mabel said, turning back to him. "But hey, it's still your turn! Maybe you'll get luck-"

"Forget it," Dipper refused, crossing his arms angrily. "I'm not playing a broken game.

"Seriously? You're quitting just because you didn't get points for a strike?" Mabel said, somewhat annoyed by his reasoning.

"Look, I hate to be a sore loser and all, but I prefer to play games that actually work," Dipper said as he stood up from his seat. "Can we just go do something else?"

"Dipper's right," Evan nodded, standing up from his seat as well. "Why play something that's obviously glitchy? You know what isn't glitchy? The library!"

"We're not going to the library," Mabel sighed. "But, fine. We'll go somewhere else. I know a bunch of other places we can go besides bowling!"

"How exciting," Evan said sarcastically with an eye roll.

"You bet it is!" Mabel said excitedly, putting her arm around Evan and suddenly pulling him to her. Evan's eyes narrowed at her with this action. "Get ready! Because the Master of Fun's just getting started!"

* * *

From the bowling alley, the three moved on to Ye Royal Discount Putt Hutt, Mabel's most anticipated choice. Evan had been asked whether he had played before, to which he had answered no. Therefore, his performance in the games they played was not to be desired. Mabel, on the other hand, got first place in just about every game they played, no surprise due to her mini-golf skills.

Similarly to Evan, Dipper's mini golf performance left little to be desired, not to anyone's surprise. Although, he did have some surprising moments in some of the games they played. He had actually made three solid hole-in-ones, which each made him feel like a winner in his own right. He wanted to keep and frame his golf cards to have something to show for his successes, but a fan in the middle of the course had randomly activated and blew the cards out of his hands into the course's pond, drenching them. Because of this, he had become mad once again.

Feeling sorry for him, Mabel had decided to take him and Evan somewhere else, and a place that she thought they both might've found more in their strengths: the arcade. In an attempt to help alleviate him of his anger, Mabel convinced Dipper to give Fight Fighters a chance, despite one of his last times playing the game resulted in a video game character coming to life and beating him up. He gave in and played against her, to which she had let him win to make him feel a sense of pride and accomplishment.

She switched out with Evan, who had no desire to play any game but was pushed to by her. He went up against Dipper, who felt like he had his victory streak secured. However, Dipper's controls suddenly malfunctioned mid-game and he was unable to move his character, and Evan easily came back and stole his victory. This only reignited Dipper's frustrations of things going wrong for him and without saying a word, he walked away from the two so he could clear his head and cool off on his own.

Mabel looked over at Evan, who shrugged as if he had no idea what had happened to his controls either. He once again suggested going to the library so they could all cool off and relax, to which Mabel continued to dismiss, much to his continued dismay.

Once Dipper had calmed down a bit, the three took on another one of Mabel's suggestions: laser tag. They made their way over to Big Gunz Laser Tag, where they were then prepared to go into the arena. Laser Tag was yet another activity that Evan had never played nor had any desire to play, being the only kid about to enter the arena who didn't look remotely excited.

The guns and gear were assigned. Dipper's player name was Rocketship, Mabel was Firefly, and Evan was Hunter. The doors had opened and everyone came rushing in, whereas Evan just walked inside disinterestedly. Mabel took the game very seriously and acted as though she was in a real war zone, doing jumps and dives around walls, making her an ultimate point racker, as well as a difficult target. Dipper played the game fairly normally but was kind of into it as well. He wasn't doing particularly amazing, but he scored several shots and points and was actually enjoying himself. He knew that this time, there was no way he could get last place.

Throughout a whole game of people running around, blasting others with laser guns, and screaming, Evan simply stood in the center of the arena with a bored look on his face, not firing his gun once the whole game. Instead, he sighed as he just casually took shots from every player that crossed paths with him.

While Mabel was too into the game to even notice this behavior, Dipper spotted him and made note of his lack of enthusiasm. He felt as though he needed to approach him and check on him. Before he could act on this, a train of running kids ran straight into him and pushed him down to the floor. He attempted to get up but was almost immediately trampled by another bunch of running kids who paid no attention to his being, running right on top of his back without noticing him there.

* * *

The game of laser tag had ended and everyone starting getting out of the arena through the designated exits. Everyone returned their guns and gear, with workers there to assist. Full of thrill, Mabel ran over to Evan as he returned his gear.

" _Woohoo!_ " she cried out excitedly. "Now wasn't  _that_  something?" Evan gave her a blank look and remained silent as she started to nudge him. "C'mon! Tell me that wasn't fun!"

"That wasn't fun," Evan told her flat-out.

"Yeesh. I see someone needs to learn what a figure of speech is," Mabel said, excitement immediately dying down due to Evan's bitterness.

"I know it is. I just don't think what we did was fun," Evan said.

"How are you still not having fun after all we've done today?" Mabel asked, started to feel kind of desperate. "What does it take to make you happy?"

"Well, there's still-"

"Not the library!" Mabel cut off, crossing her arms frustratedly. The bitter face Evan gave right after implied that she was correct on her presumption of what he was about to say. "Look, let's just get Dipper and find something else to do instead!" She then glanced around the room and noticed Dipper wasn't around. "Where is Dipper, anyway?"

"Right here."

Mabel and Evan turned around to see Dipper being aided out of the arena by a worker. He looked bruised, his hoodie looked slightly torn on the edges, and he looked generally unhappy. The worker then let him go, allowing him to stand freely on his own without support.

"Gosh, what happened to you  _this_  time?" Mabel asked as she scanned his appearance.

"I don't wanna talk about it," Dipper dismissed calmly as the worker started to take his laser tag gear off for him. Despite his pain, he put on a smile. "At the very least, I think I did pretty decent that game. There's no way I could've gotten last place."

To the right of them, a screen suddenly lit up displaying the scores of every player in the match. The three walked over to it for a closer look, as did a bunch of the other players from the game.

Mabel glanced at the very top and saw Firefly, the name of her assigned gear. She smiled. "Ha! Best not come against me in a real firefight!"

Dipper scanned the scores from the top to bottom, unable to spot his name immediately. He expected to find himself somewhere around the middle of the board but glanced down at the bottom to see that Rocketship had scored absolutely zero points and made last place after all.

"Zero points?!" Dipper questioned, getting upset again. "But that's not possible! I know for a fact that I got points!" He then looked in the middle of the screen and saw Evan's gear name, Hunter, with a fair amount of points. "And how did Evan get so high? I saw him and he wasn't even playing!"

Evan shrugged innocently at the question. However, the worker behind Dipper was examining the laser gun he had used. He suddenly appeared to have noticed something.

"Whoops, it looks like your gun was actually programmed for Hunter," the worker told Dipper, showing him the inside of the laser gun. Upon looking at the gun, he saw that it was, indeed, set to Hunter. The worker then grabbed Evan's old gun and opened it up. "Yep, and this one says Rocketship. You both must've grabbed the wrong guns by accident."

Dipper stared forward blankly for a moment, trying to process what was said and the general situation. An activity he thought he had finally found an edge in, only to find himself getting trampled by little kids and then learning he had supposedly grabbed the wrong gun. Despite the fact that Evan's score was actually representative of his, he still felt as though he had once again gotten screwed over by fate.

"Oh well," Mabel dismissed. "We could just play again! It's no big deal. Right, bro?"

She looked over to the side to look at him but saw him walking out the doors of the building, leaving her on her own with Evan again.

"Oh boy," she said, realizing he was upset again.

She quickly ran toward the door and outside the building to catch up to him, with Evan slowly following behind her. As she rushed outside, she looked around for him. At the same time, she noticed how windy it had become and how the hazy the sky looked as the sun was close to setting. She soon spotted Dipper walking toward a corner, about cross the street.

"DIPPER!" Mabel called out to him as she continued running after him. He didn't look back at her, although she knew he had heard her. She picked up her speed a little bit and ran right in front of him, spreading her arms out to block him from going forward. "Hey! Where are you going?"

"I'm done, Mabel," Dipper said calmly. "Look, I don't know if you've noticed, but while you're having the time of your life, there hasn't been a single thing we've done today that hasn't screwed me over."

"Trust me, I've noticed," Mabel said as she rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly. "But c'mon, you're not seriously bailing on us because you can't win anything, right?"

"Mabel, I'm just not having fun anymore," Dipper admitted, stuffing his hands into his hoodie pockets and turning around glumly. "If you still wanna do things with Evan, then do them without me. Just give me a call when you need a ride back."

Dipper started to walk away again, but Mabel wasn't going to let him walk around all night on his own. She ran in front of him and stopped him again. "C'mon, Dipper. We're not just gonna go on without you. It won't be as fun!"

"Honestly, Mabel, even I'm thinking we should just go to the library like Evan wants," Dipper said, gesturing over at Evan, who just caught up with the two. "That sounds the most fun to me right now."

"You see?" Evan asked, looking over at Mabel. "Even your brother thinks we should go to the library! I think that's a fair enough reason for us to go."

"No libraries!" Mabel scolded, glancing back and forth between the two.

She pulled out her phone and looked at the time. It was about to be 6 PM, and they had first left the house at about 11 AM. They had spent most of the day doing various different activities and they still hadn't managed to make Evan crack a single smile from excitement. She wasn't quite sure when Ryland was to return from his BMX event other than 'tonight'. It was early in the evening, however, and she figured she still had time to try to get Evan to have fun.

"Look, we still have time to do some other things that aren't games..." Mabel told Dipper looking over at Evan. "...and isn't going to the library! Something we can all enjoy that isn't competitive or boring."

"Well, what do you suggest?" Dipper asked with a sigh, curious as to what she'll come up with.

Mabel thought for a moment, actually unsure herself. "Umm, we could do, uhh-"

Suddenly, the wind blew a piece of paper right into her face. She grabbed ahold of it and held it out in front of her, reading it. It was a flyer advertising the new Gravity Falls Pier that had opened the night prior. The flyer had a shot of some people riding the Gravedigger rollercoaster while displaying focal points that included games, rides, and prizes.

At that moment, Mabel heard a series of very distant screams. She held the flyer down and stared down the road in front of her, where she saw the various rides of the pier in the distance over at Lake Gravity Falls, which included the Ferris wheel, a rocking boat ride, and, of course, the Gravedigger. At that same moment, the park and the colorful and luminous lights of its rides lit up to suit the darkening early evening sky.

Her eyes sparkled in awe of the pier. It looked almost like a mini-theme park, but it was over water. She smiled and pointed forward at the pier, prompting Dipper and Evan to look over at it as well.

"- _that_."

Dipper's heart sunk at the sight of the pier. In the distance, the people riding the Gravedigger were going around on the ride's various loops. He soon began to hear the faint screams of terror and it gave him haunting chills.

He clenched his shoulder nervously and looked over at Mabel. "Well, I mean, uh, I'm not so sure about…"

"C'mon!" Mabel said wrapping her arm around Dipper in a sisterly way. "This one will be fun for sure! Going on rides together! Playing games for prizes! Lots and lots of junk food! What could be better?" She glanced over at Evan. "What do you say, Evan?"

Evan stared at her with an unexcited look and just sighed, knowing that there was no way he was going to change her mind. "Okay," he said with a dismissive shrug.

"Yes! That's the spirit!" Mabel cheered, not quite detecting his continued lack of interest. She wrapped her other arm around him and pulled both him and Dipper intimately to her, neither of them quite thrilled by it. "As the Master of Fun, trust me when I say that this is going to be one of the best nights of our lives!"

"Oh  _god_ ," Dipper said fearfully, dreading the experience that he knew was soon to come.

* * *

The three soon arrived at the pier and walked past the entrance, taking a look around the place. As one would expect from a new pier that was just opened the night before, it was lively as people from all over town and likely out of town were thriving around the place. There were so many folks playing different games, eating at the various food stands, and just enjoying themselves.

"Man, this place is amazing!" Mabel said in awe and she looked around. "It's so modern, yet still so Gravity Falls!" She then pointed toward a nearby stand. "Look, they're giving away a cow!"

At the stand, there was a giveaway for a live cow that you could win by doing a perfect three ring toss. At that same stand, Farmer Sprott was next in line to do the toss.

"C'mon, ya slowly becomin' good for nothin' hand!" Sprott scolded his hand as he warmed up to do the toss. "Clara needs a new friend and you're gonna get 'er one!" He took a deep breath before tossing the first ring, but instantly missed, meaning he was out. He dropped to his knees dramatically. " _NOOOOO!_ " he cried out aloud as he started his hitting the ground with his fist. "YA LET ME DOWN AGAIN, YA STUPID HAND!"

Mabel spectated from the distance beside Dipper and Evan. "Man, a perfect three ring toss is easy. I'd do it myself if I didn't already have Waddles."

"Except, where would you even put a cow as opposed to a pig?" Dipper asked her, raising an eyebrow.

"I have my ways," Mabel told him. As she turned away from the cow giveaway, another stand caught her eye and caused her to gasp. "Look guys! They're selling churros on a stick!"

"Seriously?" Dipper questioned, glancing over where she was facing. The churros on a stick she described were literally multiple horizontal churros stacked amongst each other with a stick going through them. "That looks, like, ridiculously unhealthy. Even by your standards."

"Then you have no clue what my standards are," Mabel said as she eyeballed the stand.

At the stand, Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland were both leaving the stand, each with their own churros on a stick. Sheriff Blubs took a large bite out of it and made a satisfied noise. "Gosh, Durland! These churros on a stick are sweet!"

"Not as a sweet as you, my Blubs," Durland said sweetly.

"You always flatter me, Durland," Blubs said blushingly. "Seriously though, aren't we way too old to be eating this stuff? It's not exactly good for us."

"Yeah, we could get pretty sick," Durland nodded, before immediately taking a bite himself.

The two looked at one another and smiled. "Worth it!" they exclaimed at the same time, before holding hands and walking off through the pier together, each taking yet another bite out of the churros.

Mabel then turned around toward the Gravedigger rollercoaster. She glanced over at the ride's line and immediately noticed how short it was. "Guys, look! The line for the rollercoaster is short! We should ride it now before it gets too long!"

Dipper's heart skipped a beat by this suggestion. He smiled as he began rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "Um, yeah, you guys should go and I'll just hang out down here. Still a bit sore from laser tag."

"What? C'mon!" Mabel pleaded him. "It's the biggest ride here and you don't even wanna ride it with us?"

Dipper sighed. "Mabel, do you remember that one time as kids when we went to that one big theme park in California and we rode  _The Rocket_?"

"Yeah, the giant rollercoaster where you were screaming so loud before you puked all over the...ohh…" Mabel said as she realized his point.

"Yeah, I was kinda hoping you wouldn't mention that aloud," Dipper said, narrowing his eyes at her.

"C'mon, Dipper. You're not seriously gonna let something that happened when we were kids affect how you feel about riding another rollercoaster, right?" Mabel asked, trying to coax him into going on with them.

"Um, yes?" Dipper said, not seeing how Mabel is trying to argue when he knew it was perfectly normal for a bad experience to dampen one's view of something.

"Well, I bet it'll be different this time. I bet this time you'll be screaming...with joy!" Mabel told him before turning her head toward Evan. "Don't you think so, Evan?"

"I don't know," Evan shrugged. "I've never been on a rollercoaster before."

Mabel gasped horrifically at this revelation. "You haven't?!" Evan shook his head, which made her even more shocked. "The Master of Fun needs to amend this situation immediately!" she exclaimed as she grabbed ahold of his arm. She then began running off toward the Gravedigger's line, dragging him along, much to his dismay. She turned her head back toward Dipper, who still stood behind in place without moving. "C'mon, Dipper!"

"Ugh," Dipper groaned nervously as he began to slowly catch up to them.

As he walked toward the line, he looked up at the ride itself. The ride's first initial drop was really tall for a simple pier rollercoaster. The more he thought about it, he thought the ride's scale was just generally huge for a pier, which made him just a bit more nervous.

Suddenly, he looked over at the ride's exit and saw some people coming out with shook-up and terrified looks. He then saw someone who appeared to be an older Gorney, walking out from the exit with a large smile on his face.

"Welp, I've been twaumatized yet again," he said as he continued to casually walk off with a large smile.

Dipper's pupils shrunk in fear by the reactions and stopped walking toward the ride. He took one more look up at the ride and how at that moment, there were people on their way up the first drop. The ride slowed down a bit upon reaching the top, but as it began dipping down the other end, it quickly dropped right back down. The screams of the people on the ride began echoing through his head like the TV commercial from last night. Mabel said things would be different this time, but he had extreme doubts.

"Dipper!"

Dipper looked back down in the direction of the line, where he saw Mabel waving at him, gesturing for him to hurry up and join them.

"C'mon! What're you waiting for?" Mabel called out to him.

Despite his unwillingness to go on, he continued walking back over to her, glancing once more at the ride above him in fear.

While he was catching up, Mabel already stood in line with Evan. The people in front of them began walking over to the next set of seats, putting them at the front of the line once the rope gate was closed. The short length of the line was surprising, considering the ride was advertised as one of the biggest attractions of the whole pier.

"Man, I still can't believe how short this line is," Mabel said aloud. "I thought there would be more people here wanting to ride this thing."

"Oh yeah," said one of the ride's engineers, who overheard her comment. "We thought so too. But I guess people think the ride looks too scary and so they try to avoid it."

"Um, if a ride looks scary, wouldn't that encourage more people to want to ride it rather than avoid it?" Mabel asked the engineer, not seeing the logic with his assumption.

The engineer stared at her blankly for a good moment and looked as though he had no idea how to respond. "Look, kid, just accept the fact that the line is short and don't ask questions," he said before suddenly storming off.

Mabel was kinda put off by the engineer's sudden attitude for a second before she started snickering. She then looked down at Evan. "Well, somebody's moody."

"He's not the only one," Evan said bitterly, crossing his arms and looking away from her.

"Evan, you're about to ride a rollercoaster for the first time!" Mabel reminded him. "You should be excited!"

"Why? I don't see what's the big deal," he said as Dipper slowly approached and caught up to the two right behind them.

Mabel kneeled down and got face to face with Evan. "Evan, I'm telling you. If you haven't been enjoying yourself today, then this rollercoaster will finally be the rush of excitement you've been needing your whole life."

"I seriously doubt it," Evan said bluntly.

An engineer then approached the rope gate and opened it. "Next!"

Mabel looked over at the open gate, realizing they're up. She looked back at Evan and gave him a daring look. "I guess there's only one way to find out then."

She stood back up and walked through the entrance toward the rollercoaster. Evan sighed disappointedly as he followed behind her, while Dipper slowly walked behind the two of them, shivering fearfully.

They approached the front of the ride, with Mabel getting on the rightmost seat and Evan sitting in the center right next to her. Dipper watched as the two boarded and hesitated to sit right next to them.

"C'mon, do we have to sit in the front?" Dipper asked nervously. "We can't sit a seat back or something?"

"It'll be  _fiiiine_ , Dipper," Mabel assured him, as one of the engineers helped strap her into her seat. "Are you seriously more scared about riding a rollercoaster than a twelve-year-old is?"

"What?" Dipper questioned, knowing that she's testing him by comparing him to Evan. "Of course not!"

"Then hop on!" Mabel demanded him.

Dipper took a deep breath and stuck his chest out bravely. "Fine! I will!" he exclaimed as he walked over to the rollercoaster. Before getting on, he snagged his hat off of his head and forcefully handed it to one of the engineers, not wanting it to fall off his head during the ride. He then stepped onto the ride and sat down right beside Evan in the leftmost seat. Once the other engineer finished helping strap in Evan, he moved on to Dipper.

"That's the spirit, Dipper!" Mabel cheered. "It's all about having fun! No competition. No scores. Just three pals having a good time riding a rollercoaster."

"Yeah," Dipper nodded, starting to warm up to the idea of the ride. "There isn't anything to worry about."

"Exactly!" Mabel agreed. "And you can't get screwed over here! Even if something bad were to happen, it would happen to all three of us since we're all in the same row."

"Right," Dipper nodded again as the engineer finished strapping him in, hopping off the ride.

With no one else in the back seats, it was just the three of them in the front row on the ride. Ready to go, one of the engineers then turned a key and pressed a button on the control panel, starting the ride. The ride began moving forward slowly, with the first big drop not too far ahead of them.

" _WOOOHOOO!_ " Mabel cheered as they began moving. She glanced over at Evan. "Are you ready for this, Evan?"

"After this ride, can we please just go to the library?" Evan asked, ignoring her initial question.

"What?!" Mabel questioned, appalled by his sudden question. "We're about to go rushing up and down loops on a rollercoaster and you're still thinking about going to the library?!"

The ride then approached the start of the first drop and began climbing up slowly, the clicking as they ascended as loud as can be. Dipper wasn't paying attention to the dispute between Mabel and Evan and was focused on maintaining a positive and brave attitude on the ride. " _WOO!_  We're going up! Let's go!"

"Yes, I am still thinking about the library!" Evan told Mabel. "I never wanted to come to the pier in the first place. I hate theme parks and loud, crowded places! Yet those are all you've taken us to today!"

"How can you hate them?" Mabel asked. "They're fun!"

"To  _you_. All we've done today is go to places  _you_ want to go and do things  _you_ want to do," Evan scolded her. "You've never  _once_ taken what I've wanted to do into consideration!"

Dipper continued to cheer and express his excitement for the rollercoaster right next to them. However, once he took a glance to the side and noticed how high they were, his heart sunk. He looked to the other side and back at the ride's many loops later on and started becoming nervous again. He then glanced straight ahead of them and noticed that they were nearing the top of the first drop and started to feel regretful of his decision to go on the ride.

"This was a mistake," he said to himself and he clenched his safety bars tightly as he cringed in his seat.

"Well, you said you 'okay' when I asked if you wanted to come here!" Mabel scolded back at Evan.

"And you really thought that after me not enjoying bowling, video games, or laser tag, an amusement park was really gonna be what finally makes me happy?" he asked her, appalled by her lack of awareness. "An  _amusement park?_  When I've been wanting to go to the  _library?!_ "

"But amusement parks make everyone happy!" Mabel tried to defend. "I don't understand how you're still not happy to be here and still want to go to the library!"

"Because I am not 'everyone'!" he shouted frustratedly at her. "Is it seriously that hard for you to understand that not everyone enjoys the same things? Just because I've never been on a rollercoaster before doesn't mean I'm going to enjoy it when I do!"

"THIS WAS A  _MISTAKE!_ " Dipper shouted fearfully as he saw they were about to reach the top. He stuck his head out to the side and looked back behind him at the ride's entrance. "SOMEONE STOP THE RIDE! I CAN'T DO THIS! I WANNA GET OFF!"

Mabel looked ahead of them and noticed how they were coming up on the top. She grinned daringly at Evan. "We'll see about that."

Evan narrowed his eyes at her as he faced forward unexcitedly. Mabel raised her hands all the way up as they were riding over the top and about to drop and started cheering enthusiastically. Dipper cringed further into his seat, absolutely not prepared to make the drop. He shut his eyes tightly and turned his head to the side.

"I REGRET EVERYTHING!" Dipper cried out as the ride began leaning forward to the other side of the drop.

Suddenly, the ride's speed picked up as it leaned forward and began rushing down the other side. Mabel was thrilled, cheering and screaming loudly as the exhilaration from the fast speed got to her. Dipper was screaming as well, but not from excitement or thrill. He had opened his eyes again upon the first drop and was staring forward as they sped amongst the tracks around the pier. His eyes darted around as they continually ascended and descended and looped round and round. And despite the fact he hadn't eaten in hours, he was starting to feel his stomach react negatively.

Dipper's terrified screams and Mabel's exhilarated cheering aside, Evan remained silent and unreactive. Through every loop and sharp turn, he remained completely bored and moody. He simply stared straight forward while he let the extreme screams of the twins to the left and right of him slowly destroy his eardrums. He couldn't care less for the ride. He barely even cared for the library at that point. He just wanted to go home. Mabel had the keys to the house, however, and so he knew convincing her to go back wasn't an easy option. So just he decided to sit there and wait until the ride was over.

A little over a solid minute later, the ride began to slow down as it slowly returned back to the entrance. Mabel found herself still laughing from the elation of the whole ride. Dipper took heavy breaths as they slowed down and felt as though his body was about to fall into shock. Evan's neutral and uninterested look just continued until the ride finally stopped.

Engineers hopped on and undid the straps and safety bars. Mabel hopped off happily, while Evan causally followed behind her. Dipper, on the other hand, threw himself on the ground after jumping off from the ride. He continued to take deep breaths as he threw one of his arms around and clenched his stomach.

"You see, Dipper?" Mabel said as she approached him. She gave him a few light pats on his back while he kneeled on the floor. "That wasn't so bad, was it? You did great!"

The pats on his back were timed completely wrong and he was finally pushed to his limit. He gagged and placed his hand to cover his mouth. Noticing this, Mabel instantly backed off away from him and stood out of his way as he kicked himself off the ground and rushed to the nearest trash can. He stuffed his face inside and let himself go, with passing pier attendees walking away from him in disgust.

Suddenly, the engineer that he had handed his hat to before the ride approached him. He casually placed the hat right on top of his back as it was hunched over the trash. "There's your hat, kid," he said as he walked off.

" _Thank you!_ " Dipper's sickly voice echoed from the inside of the trash can, having felt the hat being placed on his back.

"Well, he almost did great. Guess he really can't catch a break after all," Mabel said, also somewhat disgusted, but felt bad for him as well. She then turned over to Evan. "What about you, Evan? Did you have fun?"

"Not really," Evan denied.

"Not  _really_ , eh?" Mabel questioned, raising an eyebrow. "So that means you had a  _little_ fun?"

"It means I didn't care for the ride and I wouldn't do it again," Evan told her bluntly, crossing his arms. "Now can we finally go to the library? Please?"

"No library!" Mabel exclaimed. "I already told you a hundred times! No. Library!" Mabel turned around and looked around the pier, unaware that Evan was beginning to clench his fists angrily. "There's a bunch of other things to do at the pier! There's the rocking boat! The Ferris wheel! Maybe we can go back and get some churros on sticks!"

"NO!" Evan finally snapped. "I've had it with you! We've been doing everything you wanted to do all day and nothing that I've wanted to do! How can you be so stubborn and selfish?"

"Stubborn? Selfish?" Mabel asked, somewhat offended. "You're the one who's been dead set on the library since we left your house!"

"And you're the one who thinks that I'm instantly going to have fun doing any of these side activities that I have no interest in! Look at how I'm dressed!" he shouted, gesturing to his nerd-esque outfit. "Do I seriously look like the kind of person who wants to be running around playing laser tag and mini golf? No! I don't! But according to the so-called 'Master of Fun', these are activities that everyone is supposed to enjoy! Well, do I look like I'm enjoying myself? No! So I'm not going to go around the pier with you looking for something that you think is gonna make me have fun when it isn't! And maybe I sound selfish myself for ranting about not doing something I want to, but the truth is, you only care about having fun yourself. Not me. Not even your brother, who's standing at a trash can right now!" Evan scolded, pointing at Dipper. He then crossed his arms and looked down sadly. "You're just as bad as Ryland. Maybe even worse."

Mabel stared at him blankly for a good moment, trying to think of how to respond. She then smiled and kneeled down to come face to face him. "Hey, it's alright. You're clearly upset. But I know what will make you feel better."

Evan looked at her with a somewhat hopeful face. "Going to the library?"

"Even better!" Mabel said as she stood up happily. "Some good ol' fashioned cotton candy!"

Evan stared back at her, his hopeful face disappearing. Suddenly, he gained a wide smile and jumped up and down excitedly. "Cotton candy?! Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! I love cotton candy!"

"Yeah! I love it too!" Mabel said, smiling at him, happy that she finally managed to get him excited about something. She glanced over at Dipper, who was still using the trash can. "Why don't you stay here with Dipper while I go and get some for all of us?"

"You bet!" Evan said in the most excited and childish way he's been all day.

Mabel walked off to go and get cotton candy, casually walking right past Dipper, who didn't even notice her leave with his face stuck in the trash can. As soon as she was gone, Evan's incredibly happy smile instantly faded back into his usual uninterested look. He walked over to Dipper while he was still using the garbage and looked over at him. He then proceeded to walk out the Gravedigger's exit and began making his way toward the pier exit.

Within a few minutes, Evan exited the pier and began walking the dark, evening streets of Gravity Falls all on his own, with neither Dipper or Mabel to notice him slip away at that moment.

 


	17. Looking After The Wiser: Part 3

About twenty minutes had passed since Mabel had left to get cotton candy. Since then, Dipper had peacefully passed out on the floor against the wall right beside the trash can he was using after going on the ride. He had his arms wrapped around his hat tightly as he drooled during his deep slumber.

Soon, Mabel returned holding three cones of cotton candy. As she came back, she soon spotted Dipper passed out against the wall. She quickly glanced around for Evan, but couldn't spot him immediately.

Starting to become a bit worried, she glanced back over at Dipper. "Um, Dipper?"

No response.

"DIPPER?!"

" _What?! Who?! Where?!_ " Dipper questioned frantically as he suddenly woke up, shooting up from the ground back on his feet. He then looked over at Mabel and calmed down once he realized it was her. "Oh, Mabel. Where did you go?"

"I went to get cotton candy," she said, gesturing toward her hands. "Where's Evan?"

"He's not with you?" Dipper asked, rubbing the back of his head.

"No, I told him to stay with  _you_ ," she said, starting to get even more worried.

"Well, he definitely didn't stick around," Dipper pointed out, calmly looking around at their surroundings for him.

"Oh god," Mabel said worriedly as she suddenly dropped all the cotton candy on the ground. "We lost him?! We're going to be in so much trouble with Ryland!" She then turned toward Dipper and narrowed her eyes at him. "This is all  _your_  fault!"

"Woah, woah, woah!" Dipper exclaimed, holding his arms up defensively. "How exactly is this  _my_  fault?"

"He was with you!" Mabel scolded him, poking him in the chest with her finger. "You didn't stop him when he was leaving!"

"Oh! I'm sorry for being too busy emptying my stomach to notice a child walking off," Dipper argued back, placing his hat back on his head. "Especially when you didn't even bother to tell me that you were leaving him with me!"

"So you're saying this is my fault?" Mabel asked, crossing her arms.

"Honestly, in retrospect, I'd say that a lot of the things that happened today are your fault," Dipper told her frustratedly.

"Oh, let me guess," Mabel began. "I'm the stubborn and selfish one for not letting Evan go to the library? When all I'm trying to do is follow what Ryland had told me to do?"

Dipper opened his mouth to argue back but stopped himself. He sighed and calmed down a bit, looking over to the side to think for a brief moment. He then looked over at a nearby bench and walked over to it, taking a seat.

He took his hand and pat down on the bench space beside him, gesturing for her to sit next to him. "Let's talk for a second," he said calmly.

Mabel gave him an odd glare before walking over to the bench and sitting next to him.

Dipper sighed. "Mabel, I know you have a crush on Ryland."

"Pffft," Mabel scoffed. "Where'd you get that from?"

"Wendy told me, for starters," Dipper revealed.

"I tell Wendy lots of things that aren't true!" Mabel continued to deny, chuckling awkwardly.

"Mabel, this is essentially the same routine we go through every time you have another one of your boy crushes," Dipper continued to press. "Whenever you enter boy-mode, you start to become inconsiderate about everything and everyone else besides the guy you're trying to impress. In this case, you're trying to impress Ryland by looking after his little brother for him."

" _La-la-la!_  I'm not listening!" Mabel sang as she placed her hands over her ears, looking away from him.

"Mabel!" Dipper exclaimed, grabbing Mabel's arms tearing them away from her ears while simultaneously turning her back toward him. "Stop doing that and listen to me!"

Mabel realized she was doing no good trying to hide her feelings for Ryland from her brother. She took her arms away from him and crossed them, looking away from him again guiltily. "What do my feelings for a guy have to do with anything?" Mabel asked somewhat bitterly.

"Because today, you  _have_  been stubborn," Dipper told her upfront. "Because today, you  _have_  been selfish. You haven't been doing this job for Evan. You've been doing it for Ryland. You've been letting your feelings for a guy get in the way of the actual task at hand yet again. And I know this because again, this isn't the first time we've gone through these beats. It's happened many times before."

Mabel started to take her behavior into consideration and thought deeply about what she had done. She then started to feel guilty for her decisions throughout the day as she turned back to Dipper and sighed anxiously. "I'm doing it again, aren't I?"

"You are," Dipper said. "Ryland's just another guy, Mabel."

"He doesn't seem like another guy, though," Mabel said, standing up from the bench. "Look, I admit I've been crazy about guys many times before but I feel differently about Ryland. It's different from Gabe, or Norman, or Mermando. I don't know how to describe it, but it just is." She looked down at her hands. "I told myself before the summer started that I wouldn't get myself involved with guys this summer unless I thought I found someone really special. Maybe that's why I really want this one to work. If it doesn't...well, I guess that's that."

"Mabel, you falling for a guy isn't the problem," Dipper told her. "It's how you act to others when you fall for a guy that's the issue. The way you push others like me and Evan to the side. The way you force yourself onto others. It's great that you've found someone you think is so special, but this whole guy-crazy behavior? You gotta try to stop it. We were put in charge of a kid's life this time, and today, you've belittled him, treated him unfairly, and now we've lost him. On top of everything, he's  _twelve_ , Mabel. Remember when we were twelve? Well, imagine getting pushed aside the way you've pushed him aside today."

Mabel placed her face in her hands guiltily as she sat back down on the bench right next to him. "Oh, man. I've really messed up this time." She looked back up at him. "I'm sorry, Dipper. I guess I should really know how to manage my feelings at this point."

Dipper put his hand on her shoulder. "Hey, we're still just teens," he reminded her with a smile. "Feelings aren't easy to manage. This is just me reminding you that you're being stupid," he joked.

"Oh, stop," Mabel chuckled as she playfully whacked his hand off of her shoulder. She took a moment to think about what he told her before turning toward him and smiling gratefully. "But really- thanks, Dipper. I don't know how you, of all people, always manage to put up with my girl drama."

"I don't either, honestly," Dipper admitted. "But you're my sister, so ya know- siblings helping each other out and that sorta junk."

"Right," she said with a chuckle. She then looked back at the rollercoaster and grabbed her arm guiltily. "And I'm sorry about forcing you on the rollercoaster."

"While you're a little late for that one..." Dipper began as he lightly rubbed his stomach. "...I still appreciate the apology." He then stood up from the bench. "Now, c'mon. Let's go find Evan."

"But how?" Mabel asked, standing up from the bench as well. "He could be anywhere in this whole pier!"

" _Orrr_  not," Dipper told her. "Considering he never even wanted to be here in the first place."

"Oh, right," Mabel realized as she rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly at the obvious realization.

"Anyway, I have a pretty good idea where he went," Dipper told her with a confident grin.

* * *

A little later, the two found themselves walking through the doors of the Gravity Falls Public Library. It was somewhat late, so the place didn't have a lot of people, as closing was within the hour. The two glanced back and forth around the place as they entered before stopping in place near the entrance.

"What if he isn't here?" Mabel asked Dipper as she glanced her eyes around the building.

"Trust me, I'd be more surprised if he wasn't," Dipper replied. He then turned toward the right side of the building and began walking. "I'll check this side. You check the other. We'll meet up if one of us finds him."

"Got it," Mabel nodded as she walked toward the opposite side of the library from the side Dipper was searching.

Dipper searched around in between sets of shelves on his side, checking every spot that he could possibly find Evan. Being in a library, calling out his name wouldn't be quite appropriate, so he had to rely on his ability to simply stumble upon him. However, he wasn't having any luck finding him around the shelves.

It wasn't until he reached the back of the right side where he found a few desks for computers, where he spotted the back of Evan's head at one of the computers.

"I knew it," Dipper whispered to himself upon finding him.

Evan sat in front of a computer screen and was working on something, although Dipper couldn't immediately identify what it was. He contemplated going back to Mabel and bringing her over, but given the current bad blood between her and Evan, he felt as though he should handle him on his own first.

He walked over to him and stood over his shoulder, casually smiling. "Hey, Evan."

Evan flinched as he looked up at him. Realizing who he was, his eyes narrowed. He sighed. "I guess you're here to take me back to the pier, aren't you?"

"What?" Dipper questioned with a chuckle. "Nah, man. No one's taking you anywhere."

Evan raised an eyebrow at him, suspicious of his plans. He then looked around behind him for Mabel but didn't see her. "Where's the other one?"

"Don't worry about it," Dipper told him.

"Why? What's the game?" he asked, still suspicious.

"There's no game, man," Dipper told him, smiling to try to assure his safety. "Just relax for a second, will ya?"

Evan was still unconvinced but calmed down like he was asked to and looked back at the computer screen. Dipper kneeled down beside him and looked at what he was doing on the computer. However, whatever he was working on was way more complex than he imagined. There was a bunch of random code on the screen, followed by a dozen computer commands. It took him another moment just to realize that he had plugged in some sort of odd small device through the USB drive. He planned on asking him what he was doing anyway, but now he was really curious.

"What're you working on?" Dipper asked.

"It's...complicated," he told him.

"I can do complicated," Dipper replied. "C'mon, lay it on me."

"This is going to sound sort of ridiculous," Evan began as picked up the device that was plugged into the USB drive. "But, it's somewhat of a hacking device, I guess."

"Hacking?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow. "You hack stuff?"

"I guess you could say that," Evan answered, not feeling confident enough to directly confirm so.

"Really?" Dipper asked, actually shocked. "And you're twelve?"

"I knew it was gonna sound ridiculous," Evan said, somewhat embarrassed.

"No, no!" Dipper denied. "It doesn't sound ridiculous! It sounds more impressive than anything. Why don't you show me how it works?"

"Well, I've actually been using it all day," Evan told him, rubbing his arm awkwardly. "You just didn't know it."

"What do you mean?"

"Please don't be mad," Evan pleaded as he showed him the device up close. "This is a 'code rewirer', or, at least, that's what I call it. That's probably not what these things are actually called. Anyway, it basically redoes the code to any nearby piece of technology. Think of it almost like a remote control for any piece of technology you could think of."

"And why would I be mad about that?" Dipper asked, chuckling at Evan explaining his amazing device. "That sounds awesome."

"Well, when I said that I've actually been using it all day, I meant that I was doing it to mess with you," Evan revealed. "Your glitched bowling score. The fan that randomly turned on and blew your golf cards away. Your arcade controls not working. And your laser tag gun being set to my player."

Dipper stared at him in shock for a moment at this revelation. "That...was all you?"

"Me using this device, yes," Evan said, feeling guilty.

"How?" Dipper asked, mind blown.

"Easy," Evan said as he pressed buttons on his 'code rewirer'. "Well, easy for me," he corrected. "Anyways, look at that computer over there," he said, pointing at another computer a few desks away from them.

Dipper looked over at the computer as he was asked and saw it was on the desktop, as normal. Suddenly, the desktop disappeared from the screen and then displayed a black background with the message 'HEY DIPPER' in bolded white.

"Wow! How about that?" he chuckled as he looked on at the message. He then thought for a second and then turned back to him. "But why did you mess with me like that? I don't recall ever doing anything to you."

"It's not that you did anything," Evan began to explain. "I just thought that maybe by messing with you, you'd end up getting upset enough to convince Mabel to let us go to the library." He rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. "It...obviously...wasn't efficient. I'm sorry."

Dipper stared blankly at him for a moment, still trying to process what he had just been told. But the thought of anger didn't even occur to him. He was actually somewhat relieved that he wasn't screwed by fate and that it was actually a twelve-year-old trying to get what he wanted. It wasn't right, of course, but he appreciated the reveal.

"Are you mad?" Evan asked, somewhat fearful of Dipper's reaction.

Dipper smiled and placed his hand on his shoulder. "Nah, Evan. I'm not mad. I'm impressed. You have a gift for someone your age. That gift being your talent. You should be proud of yourself."

Evan smiled at Dipper, which must've been the first time he's smiled unironically all day. "Thanks, Dipper."

"Of course," Dipper nodded. "Just remind me to never play video games with you."

"Heyoo!" Mabel shouted as she suddenly appeared behind the two, causing them to flinch.

"SHHHH!" a nearby librarian shushed her, holding her finger over her mouth.

"Sorry!" Mabel whispered back to her. She turned back to the two boys and approached them. "I see you've found him," she said to Dipper.

Evan's eyes narrowed at the sight of her. Despite the fact that he had tied things up with Dipper, he was still on bad terms with her. Dipper looked over at him and saw his face, understanding what he was thinking and feeling. He suddenly had an idea.

"Yes, I did," Dipper told her. He looked back at Evan. "Evan, why don't you show Mabel what you showed me?"

Evan just faced forward at the computer stubbornly, remaining silent.

"Please, Evan?" Dipper tried to coax.

Evan sighed before picking up the 'code rewirer' and holding it out for Mabel to see. "This is what I call a 'code rewirer'. It basically rewires code."

"Woah," Mabel said as she looked at the device closely. "I don't know what that means, but it looks cool!"

"It's a hacking device, Mabel," Dipper simplified for her. "Evan's a hacker."

"A hacker?" Mabel questioned, raising an eyebrow. "You mean a guy who works with…" She stopped herself once she came to a certain realization. She slowly turned her head back to Evan. "...computers."

"Yeah," Evan confirmed. "That's why I wanted to come here to the library. To work on this," he told them as he placed his device down on the table. "Seeing as my room was probably gonna be locked up all day, coming here to use the library's computers was probably my best bet."

"Evan, I didn't know," Mabel said, feeling apologetic. "I was just…"

"...following my brother's orders," Evan finished for her. "I know."

Mabel looked on at him, not knowing how to respond further. She felt extremely guilty for pushing him to the side when he had such a talent that he just wanted to expand upon.

"I'm sorry, Evan," Mabel said, rubbing her shoulder guiltily. "I didn't treat you the fairest today and took you for granted, none of which I should've done. I should've let you come to the library a lot earlier today instead of trying to project myself unto you and make you miserable."

Evan stared at her unemotively for a moment, processing her apology. After a couple of seconds, he smiled at her.

"It's okay," Evan said forgivingly. "I should also apologize for how I acted. I guess I was just mad that you never focused on what I wanted to do, which is also kind of selfish in a sense. And I didn't act very appropriately when we did the things you wanted to do."

"No, no! You had every right to be mad," Mabel assured him. "As my brother reminded me…" she said as she glanced at Dipper. "...I was acting stupid and I should've considered what you wanted."

"Well, I appreciate the apology," Evan nodded.

"So now that all of that is out of the way," Dipper finally interjected. "Are we all cool now?"

"I think so," Mabel said.

"Yes," Evan nodded. "In fact, I've realized now that these library computers don't quite have the power I need to properly program my 'rewirer'," he said as he unplugged the device from the USB drive. "I'd like to go home, and if you guys trust me enough now not to blow up the house as my brother implies, you could open up my room and I can show you both what I  _really_  work with."

Dipper and Mabel looked at each other for a brief moment. Then they smiled and nodded at one another before turning back to Evan with assuring looks.

* * *

Dipper, Mabel, and Evan had finally arrived back at the Reeds' residence after a long, eventful day. By the look of things, it appeared as though Ryland had still not returned from his BMX event.

The three made their way up the stairs toward Evan's room. Mabel took the key to the room that Ryland had given her from her purse and inserted it into the doorknob lock. There was a click, and the door was unlocked. She turned the knob and opened it, pushing the door forward all the way. Dipper and Mabel gasped at the sight of the room. Evan stood confidently in front of the two.

"And  _this_  is where the magic happens," he announced as he entered the room.

The room had computer monitors all over the walls, various parts and electrical equipment installed in the walls, and a bunch of wires going around the walls as well. However, it was all organized. All the wires were kept and wrapped together rather than hanging out from one another, the monitors were precisely placed, and the other equipment was all orderly.

In the very back of the room was what looked to be the main computer, with a three monitor display and a large keyboard. And in the corner beside the door was his bed and other 'normal' things.

"What the hell?" Dipper said as he walked into the room, completely blown away by the sight.

"And I used to complain to mom and dad about not having a TV in my room," Mabel said, also stunned by the room. "Also, no wonder your brother complains about noise."

"Yeah, it's not exactly the quietest thing," Evan agreed as he sat down at his main computer. "But what this thing lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in  _power_."

He pressed a key on his keyboard, and the entire room appeared to activate. The monitors lit up, the computer fans turned on, and multiple beeps and boops began sounding throughout the room. The monitors began to display various different things. Some displayed what seemed to be camera footage, others displayed bits of data and charts.

"So...uh...I assume that drone job is really working out for your dad, huh?" Dipper asked, still stunned by the amount of expensive equipment the room was filled with.

"What does all of this stuff do?" Mabel said, walking up to a monitor out of curiosity.

"It would take way too long to explain every single function, so let me just explain the gist of it all," Evan told them. "Firstly, I need to ask- do you know anything about the weirdness of Gravity Falls?"

"Are you kidding?" Dipper asked. "We basically live the weird of this town."

"Yeah, when we were twelve, we basically had another big weird encounter every week," Mabel added.

"Really?" Evan said, somewhat excited. "So you know about the gnomes? The unicorns? The possible upcoming apocalypse of man-eating cockroaches?"

"Wait, you're saying you know about the town's anomalies too?" Dipped asked. "Also, can we talk more about those cockroaches later on?"

Evan turned back to his computer and began typing on his keyboard. "Ever since we moved to this town, I've immediately noticed how weird things are. From the floating cliffs over the valley to the odd eyelid patterns in the birch trees." Evan then pulled up a web page of various news articles on the screen. "It didn't take long for me to come across the town's weirdness lurking in the forest. Since then, I've hacked into several old archives, government files, and private servers searching for more info on them."

"You've hacked into government files?" Dipper asked, eyes bulging in surprise.

"Without getting caught, yes," Evan nodded with a smirk.

"But how?" Mabel asked. "Is it because of all your fancy equipment?"

"Actually, it was actually because their password was so insanely easy to breach," Evan chuckled. "Never make your password the entire alphabet followed by all the numbers," he told them as he turned back to his computer. "Once I was in, I was in. Where my 'fancy equipment' comes into play is that it disguises my entire IP and settings and so I'm entirely anonymous when I search for a limited amount of time until they're able to pull apart the breach details and possibly catch me despite the anonymity. So I just do it again a little later and repeat the same strategy. Go in, grab a few details, go out, repeat- no trouble. I've gotten loads of interesting and somewhat polarizing info since I started."

Dipper listened in on Evan's words with amazement of his abilities. He realized that his interest in the town's weirdness and his hacking talent could be very useful in finding new anomalies to study and catalog. And his ability to hack could contribute greatly to finding out who the rich person responsible for trying to buy out and destroy the Shack.

There was potential in a possible partnership with Evan. But perhaps, it would be better to mention this idea another time, to let their currently starting trust settle in some more.

"That's pretty amazing, Evan," Dipper complimented with a smile. "You've got a lot going for you here."

"Yeah," Mabel agreed, with somewhat of an unsure look on her face as she stepped up to him. "But why does Ryland think so low of you? What you do here is clearly amazing. And he's your brother. I figured he would've been more, I don't know, supportive?"

Evan then frowned and looked down sadly after hearing this question. "Yeah, I would've figured that too."

Dipper and Mabel glanced at one another with looks of curiosity to what he meant, while also feeling somewhat concerned. Evan then looked back up at the two and sighed.

"Ryland doesn't believe in the things I do on my computer," Evan told them. "He just complains about how he can never sleep because of how loud it is and assumes I only use it for games and nothing valuable, always insisting I 'get out of the house' and 'stop sitting around in front of a screen all day'," he air-quoted.

"Why don't you tell him?" Dipper asked.

"You don't think I've tried?" Evan asked back. "I used to tell him to just sit down and check out what I do all the time, but he never bothered. He just cares about going BMXing with his friends and doing his own things. Not taking five minutes to just go into my room without stupidly thinking I'm gonna blow the house up with all my equipment." He crossed his arms and looked to the side disappointedly. "So, whatever. It's not like I need him. At least mom and dad support me. At least they actually  _care_ about what I do."

"So, Ryland doesn't support you?" Mabel asked, somewhat worriedly. "He doesn't even know what you even do with all of this computer stuff?"

"No, he doesn't," Evan confirmed. "Would he really keep my room locked if he did?"

With this thought, Mabel then began to consider the idea of who Ryland may have really been according to Evan. All this time, she had thought that he was an example setter and a selfless mature older brother. She never would've thought that he was actually a selfish jerk who didn't care about his younger sibling.

All of the sudden, a noise was heard from the hallway, coming from downstairs. It sounded as though someone just came inside. The front door was then heard shutting.

"Hello?" Ryland's voice called out from downstairs. "Anyone home?"

"Speaking of whom..." Dipper said quietly as he listened to him enter the house at a coincidental moment.

Ryland's footsteps were heard walking up the stairs. Soon enough, he peeked his head into the room and spotted the three. He smiled at the sight of them all.

"Ah, here you all are," Ryland said as he stepped out into open view of the doorframe. "I just got back from the semifinals. And guess what- we actually made it to finals later this month! Now  _that's_ gonna be crazy!"

He chuckled, waiting for a follow-up response from someone, but the three just looked at him with blank expressions. Evan then turned in his chair back to his computer while Dipper just looked down awkwardly and Mabel narrowed her eyes at him.

Ryland was thrown off by the lack of response for a moment but shrugged it off. "Anyways, I see you guys unlocked Evan's room. Which I don't mind since you're watching him, but I wish you guys could've maybe given me a call or something and let me know beforehand." He stood at the doorway and looked back and forth between everyone, getting no response yet again. Now he was beginning to grow uncomfortable. "What's going on here? Is everything alright?"

"You jerk!" Mabel suddenly cried out as she went up to Ryland and poked her finger at his chest. "Have you seriously been blowing off and ignoring your own brother when he's been wanting to share his amazing talent with you? How can you be so selfish for so long?"

"What? Selfish?" Ryland asked, unable to immediately comprehend what she was saying right away.

"Calm down, Mabel!" Dipper ordered as he grabbed her by her shoulders and held her back away from Ryland, which she didn't show much resistance too, but didn't stop showing her look of anger toward him.

Ryland stood back a few steps as well, still surprised by Mabel's sudden and unexpected aggression toward him. "I am so confused. What the hell happened while I was gone?"

Dipper sat Mabel down on Evan's bed, where she just crossed her arms and looked away annoyedly. Dipper then looked back at Ryland, gesturing toward Evan, who was still looking and typing away on his computer. "Let's just say you're long overdue for a talk with your brother."

Ryland looked over at Evan, seeing how he still wasn't looking back at him. Clearly, he had told the twins something that warranted his attention.

"What's this about, Evan?" Ryland asked, raising an eyebrow.

Evan turned in his chair around to face him. "You're finally ready to find out?"

Ryland glanced between him and the twins, still visibly confused. "I mean...I guess?"

Without even looking, Evan tapped a key on his keyboard and an image displayed itself on the multiple screens of his room. It showed Evan dressed up in a suit on a stage, holding what looked to be a type of award and two adult figures- a man and a woman standing beside him. Ryland stared at the picture for a moment, glancing at it between the multiple monitors.

"That's you, along with mom and dad," Ryland pointed out. "When was this?"

"Three weeks ago," Evan told him. "At the National Acknowledgement for Youthful Achievers where I presented my computer skills as a hacker."

Ryland's eyes bulged in surprise. "You're a...you're a hacker?"

"Something like that," Evan shrugged.

"And what- you got an award for it?" Ryland asked, trying to process the thought. "I mean, that's pretty cool, yeah."

"It's not the first one," Evan said, looking away disappointedly.

"Huh?"

"It's not the first award," Evan repeated, pressing another key on the keyboard.

At that moment, the one picture of Evan started flipping through a series of other similar pictures of him standing on a stage to accept an award alongside his parents. Throughout every picture, there was another award handed to him for a different reason. Ryland was in none of the pictures, nor did he recognize any of them. But they were all clearly within the last year, given how similarly Evan appeared in each of the pictures.

"When were all of these award shows?" Ryland asked as the pictures flipped. "And why didn't anyone ever tell me about them?"

"Because you were always out of the house BMXing with your friends right after work," Evan answered. He then gripped his shoulder and looked down sadly. "And because...you never cared. This conversation we're having now? I've tried to have it with you several times before, but you just walked away and out of the house like you always do. Then you just assume that I just spend all my time playing games. Wasting time when instead, I've had companies ask for my help in setting up secure internet networks and doing a bunch of other security precautions to protect them from other unethical hackers. You're always doing your own thing though. And so you never get to come to my award ceremonies. Mom and dad go. But you don't."

Ryland stared at Evan with a look of guilt. He looked back at all the monitors flashing between the different award ceremony pictures, realizing the mistakes he had made. He never thought about how he had actually treated his brother. He had always called him annoying and never really thought of him above that. But then he remembered that Evan had always tried getting his attention before and he had always neglected him.

Now here he was- being shown many pictures of events he had missed. Times where he could've been there to show support for him but didn't. All the times his genius was celebrated and he wasn't there to celebrate with him. Dipper and Mabel had the right to be upset with him with this knowledge. He messed up. He disappointed his brother far too many times.

"Evan, bro…" Ryland began with a guilty tone as he walked up to him and kneeled down in front of him. "I'm so sorry. I obviously didn't know and I took you for granted. I pushed you to the side when I shouldn't have. I've been...so incredibly selfish and only cared about myself."

Dipper nudged Mabel with his elbow as they watched Ryland apologize. "Man, you two really would be perfect for each other, huh?" he whispered jokingly to her.

Not finding the joke all that funny herself, she elbowed him back in the stomach, causing him to groan in pain, but quietly enough not to take away from the moment.

"You're my little brother, Evan," Ryland continued as he put his hands on Evan's shoulders. "Maybe I don't show it, like, ever. But you mean something to me. And knowing now how much more you really are and how what I saw of you before was something so little, it makes me feel like a huge idiot. This…" he said, gesturing to his room and the screens. "...is brilliant. What you do is brilliant.  _You_ are brilliant. And I am so sorry for never taking a second before to even acknowledge that."

Evan stared at Ryland blankly for a moment after this statement. But then his eyes started to swell up with tears, which he was visibly attempting to fight back. Ryland saw this look in his eyes and was instinctive to stretch his arms out for him. After a brief moment of trying to fight tears back, Evan gave into his emotions and wrap his arms around Ryland, and the two shared what was potentially their first real brotherly embrace. Ryland wasn't getting as emotional as Evan had gotten, but he had felt touched to be hugging his little brother and gain his forgiveness, and shut his eyes as he lived in the current moment.

Dipper and Mabel continued to sit in Evan's bed and watch the two from behind. Mabel smiled as she watched how the two had finally made up. She was also happy that Ryland had actually owned up to his mistakes as a brother. But generally, as someone who loved seeing people happy and together, this moment wasn't an exception for her.

* * *

A little later that night, Dipper and Mabel stood outside the house across from Ryland and Evan, who stood inside by the front door.

"I guess I should kind of apologize for everything," Ryland told the two as he rubbed the back of his head. "If I hadn't been so ignorant for so long, I probably wouldn't have needed you guys over."

"Well, it's okay," Mabel said. "Meeting Evan was a joy. And I kinda like to think that you two wouldn't have made up if it wasn't for us."

"I guess that is one way to look at it," Ryland chuckled. "In that case, I should be thanking you guys."

"Well, either way, it was no problem," Dipper said until he recalled the earlier events of the day. "Well, except for maybe a little bit earlier today."

"Yeah, sorry about all of that again," Evan said. "And you know, for what it's worth, I actually did have  _some_ fun today. For as much as I didn't want to admit it earlier in the day, I'd totally be down for another rollercoaster ride one of these days that isn't forced against my will."

"HA! I KNEW YOU'D LOVE IT!" Mabel exclaimed victoriously.

"Well, I don't know about love, but-" Evan tried to clarify.

"I DON'T CARE! A POINT TO THE MASTER OF FUN!" Mabel said, pointing exaggeratedly at herself.

"But...uh…"

"Trust me, you're not gonna win," Dipper warned him. "Just let her have this one."

Evan looked at him for a minute before just shrugging and accepting it like he told him to.

"Anyways, thank you guys," Ryland said as he rubbed the top of Evan's hair. "For everything. Now Evan and I have some catching up to do."

"Treasure your sibling bond, Ryland," Dipper reminded him as he and Mabel began slowly walking away from the house. "Trust me- as much as having a sibling can be a pain at times, it's good to have someone who's always by your side," he said as he nudged Mabel with his elbow.

"Agreed," Mabel nodded with a smile.

"I promise to keep that in mind," Ryland assured them as he began waving at them. "You two have a safe drive back to the Shack!"

"Oh, and if you two ever need anything that I could help out with, just let me know," Evan also reminded them.

"Thanks! And I think that's an offer we'll definitely be taking in the future," Dipper said, looking back as he and Mabel approached Soos' pickup.

"Again, just let me know," Evan said, smiling as he began to wave at the two as well.

"Will do!" Dipper said as he opened up the front door to the pickup and got inside. Mabel then pulled open the passenger door and jumped into the seat beside him. The two then looked back toward the brothers and waved back at them.

Ryland and Evan continued waving at them as Dipper appeared to start up the pickup truck and drive out of the driveway back onto the main streets. Soon, they drove out of sight and disappeared into the night.

"You already said you don't play games, right?" Ryland asked, putting his hand down from waving.

"Not most of them," Evan confirmed, putting his own hand down.

"Which ones do you play?"

"I really like the Uber Thrash Bros Scuffle series," Evan told him.

"No lie?" Ryland questioned with an eager smile.

"You play it too?" Evan asked, getting a bit excited as well.

"Of course, it's in my top three," Ryland told him. "I'm like a pro at every character."

"I once hacked into the source code and found ten hidden DLC characters," Evan told him. "I already have them loaded on my console, but I haven't tried any of them."

"Oh, my brother," Ryland said happily, placing his hand on his back and leading him back inside the house. "Get your console started. We have a whole night of catching up to do before mom and dad get home."

* * *

Dipper was focused on the night road ahead of them as he began driving them back to the Mystery Shack. He slowly came to a stop as they reached a red light and sat in place, waiting for it to change.

He sighed. "Well, I think I had more than enough 'fun' for one day. I'm exhausted," he announced before yawning. "How about you, Mabel?"

His tired eyes bulged in surprise when he looked over at Mabel's seat and found that she had already passed out and was laid back in her chair, snoring away. She hadn't said anything since leaving the house, but he hadn't noticed that she was actually asleep until now. That known, he guessed that she was tired as well.

He smiled at her and sighed. "A pain, for sure. But, always good to have by my side," he said to himself.

He noticed the light ahead of him turn green and stepped off the brakes and began accelerating again into the night, focusing on the road and stars ahead of him. Soon, it'd be the end of what had been a really long day. And tomorrow would be the start of another one.

* * *

 

_VEVIBLMV DROO IVZORAV GSV RNKLIGZMXV LU UZNROB_


	18. Night At The Diner: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pacifica decides to work the midnight shift at Greasy’s to avoid a chore at home. Dipper and Mabel end up getting involved, which leads to an unexpected series of events.

"Here we are, dudes. Greasy's Diner!" Soos said to Dipper, Mabel, and Melody as they walked into the restaurant.

Dipper and Mabel took a few steps forward inside as they looked around the building. This was the first time they had been to Greasy's since they had returned, and it was somewhat surprising to them to see how similarly the place appeared after all these years.

"Woah," Dipper said as he eyeballed the interior.

"And it's still just as greasy as I remember!" Mabel claimed happily as she looked around too.

"Yeah, this place really hasn't changed much at all since you dudes left," Soos said as he walked everyone over to one of the booths and sat down. "Still the same old Greasy's. Same ol' food, same ol' people…"

"Same ol' windows, same ol' tables, same ol' menus!" Mabel continued listing enthusiastically as she looked around.

Dipper picked up one of the menus from the table to read. Within seconds, the entire menu itself disintegrated to ash in his hands.

"Welp, you definitely weren't kidding about the menus," Dipper said as he looked at the menu remains in his hands.

"I feel like there's a bit of a safety hazard there," Melody said, raising an eyebrow in concern as she looked at the sandy remains of the menu on the table.

"No kidding," Dipper agreed as he wiped his hands on his jeans, dusting himself off. "No worries, though. I'll just ask for a new one."

"Well, here comes Lazy Susan now," Soos pointed out beside him. "Actually, I forgot- I think she became the new manager of the place a few years back."

"Woah, really? Lazy Susan's in charge now?" Mabel said in amazement. "That's great!"

"And somewhat concerning," Dipper added as he recalled Lazy Susan's incompetent tendencies.

Suddenly, Lazy Susan stepped up to their booth holding a small notepad in her hands. She looked as though she hadn't aged in the time since Dipper and Mabel last saw her, looking basically the same as she did four years ago. Her eyelid was still just as lazy and dysfunctional and she still wore the same grayish rose uniform with a white apron that all the waitresses wore. However, she had a badge beside her dress collar that read 'Manager', further adding to Soos' statement of her having become the manager of Greasy's in the past few years.

She smiled as she stood over the booth in front of the four. "Hello people!"

"Lazy Susan!" Mabel exclaimed in a greeting fashion. "Do you remember me? You went out with my Grunkle Stan when I was twelve! Not that that went anywhere, but you still did it and I needed a point of reference to bring up for you to remember who I am!"

"Oh, I remember you!" Lazy Susan said as she glanced at her. "Maple, wasn't it?"

"Mabel," she corrected. "But close enough!"

"Oh that's right," Lazy Susan realized, shaking her head clumsily. She then looked over at Dipper. "And you're the twin, right?"

"That's correct," Dipper nodded with a smile. "Dipper Pines."

"Ah, yes. I remember you too," she acknowledged. "You've gotten taller." Dipper sat up pridefully in his booth by this compliment as she continued to examine him. "Or have you gotten shorter?"

"What? No!" Dipper denied. "I'm sixteen now. I've grown, like, a foot in height!"

"Oops, sorry," she apologized. "Part of my decaying eye condition is the lack of ability to tell height!" she said as she began laughing, although everyone else at the table except Soos started exchanging concerned looks.

Soos, however, began unironically laughing along with her, pounding his fist against the table as he cracked up. "Haha! Good one, Susan!"

"Anyways, what can I get you people?" Lazy Susan asked as she raised her order notepad up to her face.

"Hmm," Soos said as he eyeballed his own menu. "Would it be crazy if I ordered the twenty stack of pancakes?" he asked, glancing around the table. "Because I'm feeling like the twenty stack of pancakes right now."

"Dude, twenty stacks sounds kind of hardcore," Melody commented, sounding somewhat unsure by this decision.

"Which is exactly why I'm gonna do it," Soos said as he put his menu down. "One stack of twenty pancakes!"

"Now this I gotta see!" Mabel said, grabbing her phone out of her pocket and preparing the camera.

Dipper looked back down at the table to see the remains of what used to be his menu. He looked back up at Susan. "Actually, Lazy Susan, my menu kind of just fell apart. Any chance you could please get me another one from that stack right behind you?"

"Oh, sure," she said as she glanced behind at the stack of menus that Dipper referred to. "There they are." She then looked back at him. "I'll go tell someone to get that for you. Be right back."

She then stepped away from their booth and walked off in another direction away from the extra menus that were right behind her. Dipper, Mabel, Soos, and Melody watched her walk off, each of them with confused looks.

"Weren't the menus right behind her?" Melody asked, gesturing toward them.

"Yeah, and she even looked at them," Dipper added. "Yet she's going to go get someone else to get it for me." He looked back at the stack of menus across from the booth. "I should just grab one myself, shouldn't I?"

"Nah, someone here is getting paid to do it," Mabel told him, sitting back in her seat relaxedly. "Just save yourself a trip." Her eyes turned back to Soos. "Anyways, thanks for treating us all to breakfast today, Soos."

"No prob, hambone," Soos nodded. "I thought it'd be nice to spend a morning outside of the Shack with my favorite dudes and my favorite dudette," he said, putting his arm around Melody, who smiled.

"What about Abuelita?" Dipper asked, realizing her lack of presence.

"She's back at the Shack watching Waddles," Mabel told him. "We can't bring him to a place that sells bacon as one of their main courses. That's like a form of emotional abuse for him!"

"Yeah, and I love Abuelita to death. But, I've lived with her since I was a kid," Soos told them. "She's probably had more than enough of me at this point. Whereas I only got a summer to spend with my best dudes. Gotta start making it count. You never know. I could die one of these days. I don't know what from, so that's why it's important to live in the moment."

Suddenly, another waitress placed a fat stack of pancakes on a plate right in front of Soos. "Here's your Heart Attack Breakfast Stack, sir," she said in a monotone voice before walking off.

Soos eyeballed the giant stack of pancakes in front of him that rose above his head. He then picked up a fork and began diving into it. "Like I said, who knows what I'll die from? Let's just live in the moment- right after I live in these pancakes."

Dipper, Mabel, and Melody watched as Soos then began to gorge down mouthfuls of pancakes that he stuffed into his mouth with his fork. Mabel even grabbed her phone and aimed it at him, filming as he went to town on his pancakes.

Suddenly, a blonde waitress came around the corner and walked up to the menus. As she started organizing them, Dipper glanced over at her and scanned her appearance. Upon looking at the side of her face, he felt an odd sense of familiarity. Her blonde bell bangs paired with her summer tan was enough on its own to remind him of the Northwest daughter, Pacifica.

He leaned back in his seat toward Mabel while she was recording Soos. "Hey, am I crazy or does that waitress right there look a lot like Pacifica Northwest?"

Mabel turned her head toward the waitress. The waitress' head then turned slightly and at that point, her face was in clear enough view to identify her features more clearly than from the side. The twins instantly recognized and remembered the blonde's face and knew for a fact that it was, indeed, Pacifica Northwest.

Mabel's eyes bulged in surprise. "That  _is_  Pacifica!" She then put her phone down on the table and stood up in the booth. "Hey, Pacifica! Over here! It's Dipper and Mabel!"

Pacifica glanced back behind her back in surprise upon hearing her name being suddenly called out and looked over at the booth. Upon seeing the twins and immediately realizing who they were, her feelings were far from excited. Instead, she cringed upon seeing how Mabel was shouting her name for everyone to hear.

"Pacifica! It's me, Mabel Pines!" Mabel shouted as she began waving her arms for her to appear more obvious to her. "Do you remember me?!"

Pacifica nodded furiously at her as she continued to wave and shout at her from only a few feet away. She glanced around at people at the other tables, whose eyes were starting to glance upon Mabel and herself. She turned her head back toward Mabel and used a cutting throat motion to gesture for her to stop being loud and obnoxious.

"What?!" Mabel asked, not understanding the gesture. "You want me to slit my own throat or stop talking?"

"I think she means the latter," Dipper casually told her, also getting slightly annoyed by her behavior.

"What does a ladder have to do with anything?" Mabel asked, not catching his vocabulary usage.

Dipper grabbed her arm and pulled her back down into her seat. "Just take a seat."

Pacifica then walked over to the booth with a stack of menus in her hand, she slammed one down right in front of Dipper.

"I see that after four years, you still haven't learned anything about subtlety," Pacifica said bitterly to Mabel.

"What? No 'Hello, it's nice to see you two again?'" Dipper asked playfully.

"I thought you both got eaten alive by wolves or something, honestly," Pacifica admitted. "Glad to know that didn't happen, I guess?"

"Hey, it's something," Mabel shrugged off, with Dipper nodding his head in agreement. "Anyways, look at you, Pacifica! You're looking  _hot_ , girl! Well, hot for someone who lost their family fortune and has to live and work like an average Joe along with the rest of us."

"Who  _had_  to live like the rest of you," Pacifica corrected as she crossed her arms confidently. "In case you hadn't heard, my dad got our money back about six months ago."

"What?" Dipper asked, shocked. "You mean you're just as rich as you used to be?"

"Not just as rich," Pacifica clarified. "We're, like, ten-percent less rich than we used to be. Which is upsetting, I know. But,  _I guess_  it'll do."

Dipper narrowed his eyes slightly, seeing that her rich girl tendencies still haven't quite dissipated over the past four years.

"So why do you work here if you're loaded again?" Mabel asked.

"Well, I got this job before we got our money back because I needed some way to afford new designer bags after losing my weekly allowance," she started to explain. "Anyways, despite my family's money struggles, I actually wasn't doing that bad. My parents, on the other hand, were desperate to get their money back and it's been all they've been working at since losing it. They finally did it after my dad,  _supposedly_ , got lucky gambling. And so he instantly paid to have a new Northwest Manor built and we actually just recently moved into."

"Hold up," Dipper intervened. "Your parents had a whole new manor built in about six months?"

"Now you know how desperate they were," Pacifica said. "Anyways, since getting rich again, he's been wanting me to quit working here so we could start the family business again, but I told him I wouldn't do it until I lost my job here."

"And he allowed you?" Mabel asked.

"He was persistent on getting me to quit, but eventually he gave up and let me do me," she further explained. "But if I ever quit or get fired, he's forcing me back into the business and I have no way out."

"Yeesh. A bit controlling, don't ya think?" Mabel asked.

"That's my parents for you," Pacifica said, rolling her eyes at the thought. "It's already bad enough that I have to do all these preppy, perfect rich girl things again to start reselling our image as some perfect family again. Aside from being able to go on long shopping sprees again, I can't say there's much else that excites me about being having money again. This job is the only part of a semi-normal life that I'm still clinging onto."

"But...Greasy's?" Dipper questioned. "Out of all the places?"

"Again, I picked this job ages ago," Pacifica reminded him. "And it's not like any place is willing to hire a used-to-be-rich girl that just got kicked to the streets, regardless of what our name used to mean. Lazy Susan was one of the only people in town willing to hire me. My other option was working for Toby Determined, and that was obviously a no-go."

"I'm sure Gideon will appreciate that decision," Mabel told her cheerfully.

"And besides, working for Lazy Susan hasn't been that bad," Pacifica admitted with a slight smile. "She's pretty cool even though I'm not exactly the best employee. And I've learned a bit from her."

"You dang pies! Why won't you just spin?!" Lazy Susan exclaimed angrily in the background as she started repeatedly banging on the top of the pie spinner with her fist.

"Emphasis on 'a bit'," Pacifica stated as her eyes darted back from Lazy Susan to the Pines.

"Yeah, we get it," Mabel nodded. "But you're doing awesome, Pacifica!"

"Hold up," Soos suddenly intervened midst eating his pancakes. "Isn't Pacifica that really mean and awful rich girl who used to torment you all the time last time you two were here?"

Dipper and Mabel warningly glared at Soos for a moment before awkwardly turning to look at Pacifica, who was also glaring at Soos, but her eyes also displayed a bit of guilt upon recalling her past actions toward the twins. Still, Soos' description of her felt uncalled for at that moment.

"Um, I'm standing right here," Pacifica reminded him.

"Oh, I wasn't talking to you, ma'am. I was talking to them," Soos told her innocently as he pointed toward the twins. It seemed as though he had no idea that Pacifica was right in front of him. "Anyway, so Pacifica was, like, your rival, right Mabel? And Dipper, didn't you call her the wors-"

"Just eat your pancakes, honey," Melody interrupted, picking up his forkful of pancakes and handing it to him.

"Heh, you don't have to tell me twice," Soos said as he accepted the fork and inserted the contents into his mouth and seemingly forgot about his involvement in the conversation.

Dipper and Mabel stared at Soos for another moment before looking back at Pacifica.

"Uh, sorry about that," Mabel told her, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly.

"It's fine," Pacifica said as she rubbed her arm guiltily. "It just reminds me once again of how much of a terrible person I used to be."

"Aw, don't be like that. You've changed, remember?" Dipper sympathetically reminded her. "I mean, look at you. You're managing to hold onto a normal job even though you're basically back to living in a palace where you don't need it. You're doing far better than you used to be."

Pacifica continued rubbing her arm, but looked up and smiled at him. "Thanks. I guess I still just feel kinda guilty for all the things I used to do and say to you both."

"Don't sweat it!" Mabel assured her. "Although if you're really feeling bad, maybe now that we're hanging out again and you have your money back, you could make up for your past by throwing a chocolate fountain party!"

"Um, this isn't us hanging out. This is more of a mutual reunion. Kind of like meeting a teacher in public, except slightly less awkward," Pacifica told the two, breaking apart from her emotions and reverting back to her normal attitude. "Secondly, there are a bunch of things I'd do before throwing a 'chocolate fountain party'." She then stepped away from the table and straightened out the rest of the menus in her arm. "Anyways, I have other tables to serve. I'll see you dorks around."

As she walked off, Dipper and Mabel sat somewhat caught off guard by her sudden shift in attitude. Seeing her go from emotional back to her valley girl-tude so quickly felt jarring to witness.

"Well, guess you can't change  _everything_  in four years," Dipper said, turning toward Mabel.

"She's definitely doing a lot better," Mabel said. "She just needs to loosen up a little and learn how to have fun. It sounds like the one thing she's done for 'fun' in the past four years is shopping with every bit of money coming in from her paychecks."

"Well, she  _can_  loosen up. I've seen her do it before," Dipper told her as he thought back to her splashing mud and other dirty items onto her parents' favorite carpet patterns at the mansion party four years back. "I guess it just requires pushing her to a certain point."

"Well, I think I just pushed myself to a certain point, dudes," Soos said as he leaned back in his seat sickly. "I think I had one too many of those pancakes."

"Maybe ordering a stack of twenty pancakes wasn't the greatest idea after all," Melody told Soos as she patted him on the back.

One of Melody's back pats then pushed Soos to burp loudly, which prompted Melody to flinch away from him. He then fell back in his seat and shut his eyes before immediately reopening them and smiling.

"Nope. Just a false alarm," Soos said before immediately digging into the pancakes again. As he ate, Dipper, Mabel, and Melody just looked on at him with very questionable looks. He eventually looked up from his plate and saw the looks on their faces, raising an eyebrow as he chewed slowly. "What?"

* * *

A lot of time had passed that day up to the point that the moon and stars were the only things illuminating the night sky. It was about to be 11 o'clock in the evening and most of the town had already closed its stores and shops for the day.

Greasy's, however, was only just about to close up. Pacifica stood cleaning one of the tables with a slight look of disgust on her face. Although she has long since grown used to the chore, helping clean up the diner at the end of the day was her least favorite part of the job. To her, probably the worst part of wiping down the tops and bottoms of tables was how it frequently messed up her nails. She felt as though the number of times she had to get replacement manicures to fix the paint jobs was a crime.

As she wiped down the table, she felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. She wiped her wet hands down on her apron and then grabbed her phone, answering it.

"Hello?"

"Pacifica, darling," replied the voice of her dad, Preston Northwest.

"Hi, dad," she answered casually as she held the phone with her neck so she could continue wiping down the table.

"I have fantastic news," he began. "You remember my old buddy, Monty, from the art museum, right? Well, we just won the lawsuit against him and got everything he owns!"

"What?!" Pacifica asked, shocked by this revelation. "That's terrible!"

"What did you just say?" Preston questioned, unsure if he heard her response.

"I mean…" she stopped herself and took the phone away from her face for a moment so she could give a sigh out of annoyance. "That's great, dad."

"That's what I thought you said," Preston said cheerfully. "Isn't it great? Now we're only nine-percent less rich than we used to be instead of ten!"

"Yeah, yeah, but what's happening to Monty?" Pacifica asked, not so interested or enthused by the fact that they're slightly richer than they already were.

"Well, he and his family are probably going to have a couple of fights with the bank before they end up having to live on the streets," Preston told her. "But that's okay. At least that bastard finally gets what he deserves for betraying me at the auction and taking the painting that I so rightfully deserved at the time. Revenge is truly sweet, my dear."

"I mean, sure. But, his whole family though?" Pacifica asked somewhat mournfully. "I don't think they deserve it."

"Yes, I agree. The rest of his family are good people and it's unfortunate, but it's only a minor loss. The point is- we took down Monty!" Preston tried to justify.

"I thought his son Richard was kind of cute, though," Pacifica added.

"There'll be plenty of other fish in the sea, darling. Including richer ones. Trust me," Preston said, brushing off his daughter's concerns and dismay, which caused her to roll her eyes. "Anyways, when will you be coming home?"

"Um, when I'm done?"

"Very well then," Preston replied. "Because your pony made a mess in his stable again and it smells in there. I need you to take care of it when you get back."

"What?" Pacifica asked in disgust. "Why not get our butler to do it?"

"Bernardo already went home for the evening," Preston answered. "And since he's your pony, he's your responsibility otherwise."

"B-but…" Pacifica grabbed her phone away from her face again and groaned loudly in annoyance. She had spent the last hour cleaning up Greasy's. Cleaning up after her pony was the last thing she wanted to do upon getting home.

She had an idea though. It was one that she's used several times before and one she tries not to abuse. But it became apparent to her that this was one of  _those_  nights.

"Actually dad, I totally forgot!" Pacifica began. "Lazy Susan put me on the graveyard shift again tonight. So I'm not gonna be home until morning."

"What? But you just had one of those shifts a few weeks ago," Preston remembered. "How is it that you're already being placed for another one so soon?"

"Well, you know, there's not really any other employees around to take the job, so-" Pacifica tried to explain.

"So you voluntarily accepted this duty?!" Preston asked, unpleased.

"What? No, of course not!" Pacifica denied with a nervous chuckle upon realizing her mistake with her wording of her made-up circumstances. "Voluntarily staying overnight at an ugly, dirty stinkhole of a restaurant to keep selling food to low-lives? Does that sound like me, dad?"

"I'm not sure," Preston said in a skeptical tone. "If you truly feel that way, why are you so insistent on keeping that job instead of working for your family?"

"Because...it's a tolerable, ugly, dirty, stinkhole of a restaurant," Pacifica justified. "I've grown comfortable working here after all these years."

"Well, you already know how I feel about you working there," Preston said, still unpleased with her choice. "But if it's your duty, then...fine. We'll just have Bernardo handle Mason's own...duty...in the morning. As for you, come home as soon as your shift finishes tomorrow morning. Your mother and I still have to discuss the scheduling of your advanced croquet course with you. We have to strengthen your skills again after being on a nearly four year hiatus."

"Yes, father," Pacifica said, rolling her eyes yet again at the idea of having to eventually play croquet again. "See you tomorrow."

She hung up the phone and let out an annoyed sigh. She was glad to be getting away with using her graveyard shift excuse yet again, but already began to dread the next day.

"Goodnight, stove! Goodnight, pots! Goodnight, pans!" Lazy Susan said as she emerged from the kitchen, waving at different inanimate objects as she walked along. "Goodnight, cash register! Goodnight, pies! Goodnight, tables!"

"Hey, Lazy Susan?" Pacifica intervened, grabbing her attention. "When you're done saying goodnight to everything in the restaurant again, can I ask you something?"

"Sure thing, sweetie," Lazy Susan nodded happily. She then turned away and started waving around at the place again. "Goodnight, lights! Goodnight, windows! Goodnight, floorboards with possum holes! Goodnight menu stand! Goodnight, doors!"

Pacifica knew this was a regular thing from Lazy Susan, but it still tended to make her feel concerned about her. Nonetheless, she stood patiently in place by the table she was cleaning before as she watched her continue to bid nightly farewells to all the objects in the restaurant.

"Alright, Pacifica," Lazy Susan said as she walked up to her, having finished giving her goodnights. "What's on your mind?"

"It's nothing, really. I was just wondering if we could extend our open hours for the night and I could take the graveyard shift," Pacifica suggested and offered.

"Graveyard shift?" Lazy Susan questioned. "That sounds spooky."

"Really?" Pacifica asked, somewhat frustrated by Susan's inability to remember the previous times they've gone over this topic. "We've gone through this a million times!"

"Have we?" Lazy Susan asked, still confused. "You mind filling me in again, dear?"

Pacifica facepalmed herself, before sighing and deciding to just suck it up again. "Look, I'm just asking if you'd be fine with keeping the restaurant open all night and I can stay as a waitress?"

"Well if you can manage it, then that's fine," Lazy Susan said with a shrug. "All the other waitresses have gone home already and I'm heading home for night, so it'll just be you and Franklin in the back."

"That's perfect," Pacifica nodded acceptingly with a smile.

"Alright, but are you sure you can wait the place on your own?" Lazy Susan asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Of course! I've done this before. It's a piece of cake," Pacifica confidently assured her.

"Alright. I trust you," Lazy Susan said as she dug into her purse and pulled out a pair of keys. "These are the keys to the restaurant. Take them just in case," she said as she handed the keys over to her. "Just make sure you don't lose them, okay?"

"I got it, don't worry," Pacifica continued to assure her as she accepted the keys, seeing as these are same beats she's gone through every previous time she took this shift.

"Alrighty then," Lazy Susan said as she walked toward the door and waved at Pacifica. "Goodnight, Pacifica!"

"Night, Susan!" Pacifica waved back.

Lazy Susan then walked out the door and shut it behind her. Pacifica looked out one of the booth windows to see her happily waving at other inanimate objects outside the restaurant as she walked down the sidewalk. Soon enough, she passed a fence and was out of sight.

Pacifica leaped out from the booth and made her way behind the counter and into the kitchen. There stood the restaurant's cook, Franklin, who appeared to be putting away the utensils for the night.

"Well, Franklin, Lazy Susan put us on the graveyard shift," Pacifica said as she stood by the kitchen doorway.

"Aw, really? But I just put away my tools for the night," Franklin said, slumping over in slight annoyance.

"It's no big deal," Pacifica shrugged. "In fact, why don't you just go home anyway and I'll handle the restaurant on my own?"

"Well, who's gonna cook the food?" Franklin asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I'll figure something out," Pacifica assured him. "So what do you say?"

"Sorry, but no can do," Franklin rejected. "I don't wanna get in trouble for not serving my duty and I'm not so sure I should trust you in figuring out how to handle things here by yourself."

Pacifica suddenly pulled out her purse, digging into it and pulling out a wad of cash, holding it out to him. "I'll give you a thousand bucks if you leave now and don't come back until exactly seven in the morning tomorrow."

Franklin blankly stared at the cash Pacifica held out to him for a brief moment, trying to process what she had just offered him. He then took off his cook's hat and placed it to the side before grabbing his work briefcase. "On second thought, I don't see why not!"

Pacifica smiled as Franklin walked over and accepted the cash. He then walked out of the kitchen and made his way toward the main door as he counted the cash in his hands with a wide smile on his face.

"Have a wonderful evening, Pacifica!" Franklin happily called back to her as he stepped out the door.

"You too, Franklin!" Pacifica waved to him as she walked over toward the door.

As soon as he left, Pacifica took the pair of keys that Lazy Susan handed her and locked up the door. Afterwards, she walked over to the 'Come in, we're open' sign and flipped it over so it would now display 'Sorry, we're closed' to those who walked by. She then turned around and looked around the restaurant, seeing how she was now completely alone.

Following her usual graveyard shift routine, she walked behind the counter where the cash register sat. She opened it up and grabbed another giant wad of cash from her purse before promptly stuffing it all into the register without properly organizing it. She forcefully closed the register and sighed. She knew she had to make it look like actual work had been done and customers had actually come in that night, so she had made sure to take precaution in assuring that image to Lazy Susan.

With everything else basically handled, she decided to settle in for the night, seeing as that there wasn't much for her to do anyways and she couldn't allow herself to kill the battery on her phone. There wasn't a bed in the restaurant, of course, but after doing this routine multiple times before, she had learned to work with what she had.

She walked into the kitchen and opened up a cabinet. From inside, she grabbed a big, sealed bag of white rice and dragged it out onto the wooden floorboards. She laid it out flat on the floor. She then walked over to a wall and hung up her white apron before turning off the lightswitch, cutting off the lights to the entire restaurant. She walked back to the rice bag she had set, kneeled down, and sat on the floor before laying her head back on the rice bag like a pillow.

She sometimes pictures her current circumstances. How Pacifica Northwest had become rich again, yet she still has a filthy diner job where some nights, she voluntarily chooses to 'work' for the entire night and sleep on the floor of a dirty, sometimes possum-infested restaurant. She's just happy that no one else knows about it besides her.

She grabbed her phone and set an alarm down for the morning before promptly setting it aside. She then turned over to her side and stared forward for a moment before drifting off and shutting her eyes.

Suddenly, there was a noise that sounded like it occurred right outside the wall next to her, causing her to immediately jolt up from her attempted slumber. She sat up on the ground and listened in as the noise continued. It sounded something like some sort of plastic shuffling that was paired with some crunching. It was very audible considering the walls were made out of plain wood.

Given how many times Pacifica has seen possums around the diner, she figured the noise may have just been one that was digging around in the dumpster outside. The assumption didn't make the noise any less distracting. She decided to suck it up and try to sleep through it. She lied back down on the floor, shutting her eyes, attempting to drift off and have the noise fade out of her mind.

However, the crunching and shuffling only got louder and more frequent. Pacifica peeked one eye open worriedly as she then glanced over at the wall the noise seemed to be coming behind. She was more so concerned by the fact that if there were possums outside, they could always make their way inside, given how many open holes and unintentional entrances there were for them. The last thing she would want to wake up to was a rabid possum in her face. She had to scare them off.

It's not like it would be the first time she was appointed to scare off rodents or possums in the restaurant before. While she never liked doing it, it was a lot less frightening to do in pure daylight with several customers and other employees around than being alone in near-midnight darkness. Nonetheless, she stood up from the floor and grabbed the broom from the corner of the room.

She slowly walked over to the back door before placing her hand on the doorknob and turning it. She carefully opened it, exposing herself to the cool air of the Oregon night. The outdoors were dimly lit due to the nearby streetlights, but still not nearly enough to see things clearly. Using the door as a defense, she peeked behind it to view the dumpster. She didn't see any possums on top of the dumpster, but that didn't make her any less fearful. She stepped from behind the door with her broom held out defensively as she cautiously walked toward the dumpster.

"You stupid, oversized rats!" Pacifica exclaimed nervously as she got closer to the dumpster. "You don't scare me!"

She stepped out and looked at the other side of the dumpster, but there was nothing there. She raised an eyebrow as she suddenly realized that the noise had also stopped. She started to calm down as she began to simply assume that the possums may have scurried off upon her opening the back door.

"Pacifica?" a voice suddenly asked from behind.

Pacifica shrieked in fear as she immediately turned around and swung her broom with all her strength at whatever stood behind her. Feeling the impact of hitting something, she continued to swing and beat at the thing that startled her with her eyes tightly closed.

"OW! OW! PACIFICA?! STOP IT! IT'S ME!" the voice yelped in pain.

Pacifica opened her eyes and paused herself from hitting with the broom. She glanced down at the ground at who she was hitting and realized it was Dipper, looking up to see Mabel stood right behind him, laughing at his pain. As she glanced between the two, she noticed they were both wearing backpacks. Her attention redirected back to Dipper though, who was laying in agony on the ground as guilt flushed over her.

"Oh my gosh, Dipper!" Pacifica exclaimed in concern. "I'm so sorry!" She bent down to grab his arm and helped him up from the ground. She then realized that she was randomly encountering the twins for the second time that day right behind the restaurant and her feelings of guilt quickly dissipated and turned into angry confusion. "Wait a minute…" she said, narrowing her eyes at him before forcefully pushing him back down to the ground. "I'm not sorry! What are you two doing here?!"

"First of all- OW!" Dipper exclaimed, rubbing his chest after being pushed down by her yet again.

Mabel grabbed his arm and helped him back up again as she continued chuckling. "I told you it wasn't a good idea to sneak up on her like that."

"I wasn't trying to sneak up on her!" Dipper defended before turning back to Pacifica. "Look, we were just in the area and we overheard you freaking out a second ago and wanted to check and make sure you were alright."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine!" Pacifica said bitterly. "My question is-  _why_ are you two in the area? It's like eleven o'clock! Shouldn't you two be back at the Crab Shack or whatever you call that run-down hut of yours?"

"Chill out, sis. We're just coming back from an adventure," Mabel told her calmly.

"Yeah," Dipper nodded. "Apparently, there was an area in the woods with a high count of recent giant vampire bat sightings so we went to investi-"

"I haven't cared about vampires since reading those romance novels about them in fifth grade," Pacifica interrupted, walking away disinterestedly.

"Vampire bats," Dipper corrected in an annoyed tone. "Not vampires. There's a huge difference."

"Vampires would've been a way more interesting adventure though," Mabel said.

"Anyways, long story short- we spent almost all day hunting down those bats only to find absolutely nothing," Dipper explained.

"Which sucks considering we wasted half an hour packing gear," Mabel said, gesturing toward her backpack.

"Yeah, but we'll get them again another time," Dipper said. "We went pretty far into the woods and just happened to pop out of them right around here. Almost at the exact same time as we found you freaking out and waving a broom around."

"Bravo, bravo. Brilliant story," Pacifica said sarcastically, paired with a slow clap. "And as for me 'freaking out and waving a broom around', I heard some type of plastic-shuffling and crunching outside and I thought there were possums eating out of the trash."

"Oh! That was probably me finishing a bag of Cheese Boodles by the dumpster!" Mabel assumed as she took out a fresh bag of Cheese Boodles from her backpack and showed it to her. "Hunting vampire bats really makes ya hungry at the end of the day."

"Me too," Dipper said, rubbing his empty stomach. "But I'd rather my dinner not be a bag of chips."

"They're not chips; they're Boodles," Mabel corrected, hugging the bag of Cheese Boodles.

"Whatever," Dipper said, rolling his eyes. "Anyways, since Greasy's is still open, let's just eat here real fast before heading home."

"What? I mean, no, you can't!" Pacifica denied as she stood in front of the back door. "We're not open."

"What do you mean? You're still here," Dipper said, looking at her uniform.

"Yeah, well, you see…" Pacifica began, trying to think of an excuse.

"C'mon, Pacifica," Mabel said, casually stepping past her and entering the kitchen. "After almost four years, a girl needs her fix of Greasy's pie!"

"Hey! I said you can't come in!" Pacifica called out to her.

Against her wishes, Dipper also stepped inside the kitchen, slipping right past her. He immediately noticed how all the lights were off. "Geez, why's it so dark in here?" he asked as he and Mabel slipped out of the kitchen into the main dining section.

"Dipper!" Pacifica called out angrily. "C'mon, you two! This is an important night! I can't have you two hanging around!"

She followed the two out of the kitchen into the main area. She immediately turned her head to the window by the front door and noticed Dipper looking at the 'Open/Closed' sign. Dipper flipped the sign to see that the 'Closed' side was facing outside. He looked over at Pacifica and raised an eyebrow.

"Important night for what exactly?" Dipper asked. "You guys really  _aren't_ open."

"Why are you still here by yourself then?" Mabel asked, popping out from over the counter.

Pacifica was getting aggravated with the twins' presence but realized she wasn't going to get away with her made-up excuses. She calmed herself down and sighed. "I'm trying to avoid my parents tonight so instead of going home, I asked to take the graveyard shift and stay overnight. Except instead of actually taking the shift, I just close up shop, stuff money into the register, and spend the night here on my own."

"You go through this much effort to get away from your parents?" Mabel asked, raising an eyebrow. "That sounds concerning."

"It's for an admittedly petty reason," Pacifica assured her. "I'm not in mortal danger or anything. Just want to avoid a chore, that's all."

"So you're spending the night at a filthy restaurant to avoid a chore?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah, still sounds like you're putting too much effort into this," Mabel said.

"And can't you get caught?" Dipper asked as he started glancing around at the top of the walls. "There's not, like, security cameras or anything?"

"Not since Lazy Susan took over management," Pacifica explained. "She took down all the security cameras down because she was afraid they were watching her."

"Again- Lazy Susan as manager? That's somewhat concerning," Dipper said, restating his earlier thoughts.

"Well, if you can't get caught, then what's the big deal with us hanging around here?" Mabel asked as she began spinning herself around on one of the rotary seats by the counter.

"Before you two showed up, I planned on getting some sleep," Pacifica said, crossing her arms annoyedly. "Which was already hard enough to do."

"Sleep? Seriously?" Mabel asked, thrown off by this idea. "You have the whole restaurant to yourself and you planned on sleeping?"

"What do you expect me to do?" Pacifica asked. "Throw a party for myself?"

"Well, I mean, that sounds more exciting than sleeping," Mabel said. "But I figured you would at least attempt to make more use of this place if you won't get caught." She then hopped off the rotary seat and ran over to the spinning pie stand. "Like eating these pies!"

"I can't eat those! If Lazy Susan sees anything missing from that stand, she'll kill me!" Pacifica exclaimed, walking over to the stand.

"Why?" Dipper and Mabel asked simultaneously.

"You're already trying to make this place look like people had come here overnight," Mabel added. "Doesn't that include a 'customer' coming by and ordering pie?"

Pacifica opened her mouth to argue but stopped herself once she began to process what Mabel had said. She realized she was right. She could easily get away with eating those pies because it would've looked like she had sold them. Her face began to redden from the embarrassment of never realizing this herself before.

"Have you seriously just stuffed money into the register and planned on doing nothing else afterward to make the place look like it's been visited?" Dipper asked, smiling amusedly.

"Well, I've never had to before," Pacifica said, crossing her arms and looking away in embarrassment.

Mabel looked over at the pie stand and smiled. She slid the glass door open and took a pie out. She held it in one hand while using her other hand to tap Pacifica on the shoulder to grab her attention. Pacifica turned back around and saw her holding the pie.

Mabel then held the pie forward to her. "May you do the honor?"

Pacifica blankly stared at her for a moment as she glanced back and forth between her and the pie. She wasn't quite sure what to think of this offer. On one hand, she wasn't quite fond of the idea of agreeing to stuff herself with pie as it goes against most of what she was taught as a Northwest. On the other hand, she was already spending the night at the restaurant to get away from her parents. Perhaps it was time to break a few of the rules she had grown up to follow as well.

She held out her hands and took the pie from Mabel. She stared at it intently before glancing back and forth between it and the Pines twins' again. Suddenly, her eyes narrowed and she smiled daringly. The twins were right. She wasn't going to get caught by Lazy Susan, and she knew that her parents were never going to learn of this either.

This was going to be a much more fun graveyard shift than usual.

 


	19. Night At The Diner: Part 2

Pacifica had narrowed her eyes and smiled daringly at Mabel as she held the pie she had given her in her hands. The idea of eating the diner's pies without paying and not getting caught was appealing to her. However, she had another idea at that moment that she found just a tad more interesting.

Without warning, she then took the pie and threw it at Mabel's face. Pacifica immediately burst out laughing in the most childish way she's laughed in years.

Mabel didn't react in any particular way other than just standing there with the pie pan stuck to her face, but she made no momentary effort to take it off. After a brief second, there was a muffled noise coming from her that sounded almost like she was crying. The rest of her body was moving along with the reaction. The assumed sobbing coming from her immediately prompted Pacifica to stop laughing.

"Woah, what the hell?!" Dipper questioned in surprise as he turned over to Pacifica. "What'd you do that for?"

"I was just...that wasn't meant to be mean!" Pacifica tried to defend as her face flushed red out of embarrassment for her misunderstood action and intentions. "I was just messing around! I didn't mean to hurt her!"

Dipper walked up to Mabel and pulled the pie pan from her face, but a fair amount of the pier's shape still held on to her. "Mabel, are you okay?" he asked as Mabel then began to pull apart the pieces of pie from her face.

"Mabel, I'm sorry," Pacifica apologized. "I was just trying to joke around…"

She stopped her apology short as Mabel's muffled noise became unmuffled as she wiped the chunk of pie from her mouth. Rather than crying, she was actually laughing. She wiped most of the major chunks from her face so it mostly visible and she was clearly amused by what had just happened rather than upset about it, which surprised Pacifica.

Even Dipper looked a bit surprised for a moment. Although, he did, at first, feel as though Mabel was a bit too old to be crying about a pie to the face. Also the more he thought about it, he should've figured that she was the least likely person to even be upset about the matter unless she was being embarrassed, which she clearly wasn't.

"That was a good one, Pacifica!" Mabel praised through her laugh.

"You're not upset?" Pacifica asked, raising an eyebrow.

"About a pie to the face?" Mabel questioned with a chuckle. "What am I? Six? Of course I'm not mad! This is the kind of rise I was always hoping to get out of you!"

"Really?" Pacifica asked.

"Yeah!" Mabel nodded enthusiastically. "You still have a lot to learn though."

As she said this, she immediately placed her hand into the open pie spinner and pulled out another pie, swiftly throwing it at Pacifica's face without giving her a second to react. Her throw was also a bit harder than Pacifica's, which, paired with her lack of expectation, sent her falling back onto the floor. As she sat up, the pie pan fell off and pieces of the pie began falling off her face onto her outfit and the floor.

She looked up at Mabel in complete shock of her action and disgust by being covered in pie.

Dipper stood back awkwardly behind Mabel. While he knew now that it was all in good fun, he also knew by the look on Pacifica's face as she rose from the floor that things were about to get messy.

"You. Are so.  _Dead_ ," Pacifica said menacingly to Mabel as she stood back on her feet.

"Hey, just leave me out of this," Dipper said as he stood back from what was about to happen. "This hoodie is annoying to wash."

Mabel and Pacifica's eyes darted toward him. They then glanced back at one another and grinned understandably, mentally exchanging thoughts.

"Sure thing, bro-bro!" Mabel said in a sarcastic voice.

"Yeah, we wouldn't want anything to happen to your clothes," Pacifica added in a similar tone.

"You two are gonna throw pies at me anyway, aren't you?" Dipper asked, eyes narrowing as he detected their obvious sarcasm.

"Oh yeah," Mabel nodded as she held two pies, one in each hand, while Pacifica held one.

The two girls then threw the pies right against his face and hoodie, while Dipper made absolutely no attempt to avoid them, standing completely still as he took the hits, slightly irritated. The irritation quickly faded, however, and he found himself somewhat amused as well. His feelings of amusement quickly increased and he found himself laughing as well. Mabel and Pacifica were obviously amused by the whole thing too, laughing fairly hard themselves.

Pacifica soon calmed down from her laughter a bit as she walked over to the counter and grabbed a towel from the other side. "Alright, as fun as that admittedly was, we should probably move on," she said before wiping her pie-covered face with the towel. "Now that I think about it, I'd rather not be a pie-smelling, ant attractor."

"Well, we're all out of pies, so it's not like we could continue anyways," Mabel said as she pointed to the now empty pie spinner. "Is there anything else that we could do here?"

Pacifica placed the towel on the counter once she finished wiping off all of the pie from her face. She then thought for a moment and considered some possibilities of other fun things the four could try.

"I have some ideas," she claimed as she smirked daringly.

* * *

Within the hour, the three had made a basic setup for a hot dog eating contest, with a batch of microwaved hot dogs prepared on the table and some condiments to the side. Dipper and Mabel sat as contestants while Pacifica stood back with a timer ready to go on her phone. She had it set for ten minutes, ensuring the twins were ready before she set it off. Mabel looked as though she was ready to dive straight in while Dipper sat back with a relaxed and confident look on his face.

Pacifica started the timer, beginning the contest. Mabel immediately began stuffing her mouth with hot dogs, gorging through them. While Mabel took the playful contest seriously, Dipper sat calmly beside her at the table placing the provided condiments to his liking in an orderly fashion. Rather than treating the 'contest' competitively, he figured this was a decent opportunity to eat a proper meal for the night.

Upon finishing covering his hot dogs in condiments and toppings, he held it up to his mouth to eat normally. He took a bite, enjoying his creation. However, he soon found himself getting covered in ketchup and mustard as Mabel had taken bottles of both condiments from the table and began squeezing the tops at him. Dipper leaned back defensively as he began laughing, despite knowing how annoying laundry was going to be later. To get back at her, he took one last big bite of his hot dog before jumping up and smearing the rest of it on her face.

Pacifica spectated this chaos from afar, feeling disgusted by the mess that was being made. However, despite her disgust, she couldn't help but laugh at the two fighting, finding Mabel getting a messy hot dog smeared against her face and Dipper getting coated in ketchup and mustard to be legitimately hilarious.

As the night continued, similarly messy and playful shenanigans around the diner ensued. In the kitchen, Mabel had gone up to a soda fountain and popped open the top to pull out one of the soda tubes. She immediately began to drink straight from it without hesitation. She then looked down and saw Dipper holding a cup with his eyes narrowed at her, having attempted to get a drink from the machine before seeing what she had done. She looked back and forth between him and the soda tube before taking it out of her mouth. She then aimed the tube at him and sprayed, the pressure of the soda knocking him down to the floor as she chuckled amusedly.

The three had also broken out a couple of boxes of french toast sticks and structured them up around the counter like a chain of dominos. The sticks led to a small catapult-like contraption put together with a spoon and some small boxes. Dipper placed a cherry inside the spoon, studying it and fixing up its position as necessary. He then gave a thumbs up to Pacifica on the other end of the counter.

Leaned over the counter casually, she effortlessly flicked the french toast domino on the edge with her finger and began the chain reaction. The chain eventually led to Dipper's spoon catapult, the final french toast falling on top of the spoon's handle, which was enough weight to fling the other end upward, launching the cherry through the air. On the other side of the room behind Pacifica was Mabel, who rubbed her hands together anxiously in preparation for the incoming cherry. She studied the trajectory of the cherry as it flew toward her, noticing how it was about to fly overhead in her current position. With a booth right behind her, she dove back in the seat with her mouth open as the cherry made impact.

Dipper and Pacifica ran over to her as she sat up in the booth. She stuck her tongue out, revealing the perfectly intact cherry. Dipper and Pacifica both clapped their hands in a congratulating manner for her success as she ate the cherry with a feeling of delight and accomplishment before then remembering that she wasn't a fan of cherries and spat it out in disgust.

* * *

A little later, the three found themselves stood in the kitchen as Mabel ran around collecting various boxes and cans of food while Dipper and Pacifica stood back and watched what she was trying to do. Each piece of food that Mabel had grabbed was actually an ingredient for something she was preparing within a blender.

"Mabel, would you hurry it up a bit, please?" Dipper asked, getting slightly impatient with waiting for her.

"Yeah, we've been standing here waiting for you to finish for like twenty minutes now," Pacifica added bitterly, also getting impatient.

"Alright, alright," Mabel settled as she finished putting together items in the blender. She turned toward the two with an excited smile on her face. "So, Dipper, being my brother, I'd say you're familiar with my ability to make  _exquisite_ drinks, such as Mabel Juice."

"Exquisite is the last thing I'd call Mabel Juice," Dipper said, recalling the drink and its dreadful effects toward those who drank it other than Mabel.

"Pacifica, I don't believe you're familiar with Mabel Juice," Mabel said, not paying attention to Dipper's remark.

"Thankfully," Pacifica commented as she crossed her arms, finding the idea of ever drinking something called 'Mabel Juice' incredibly unappealing.

"Well, today, I present to you the newest creation on Mabel's menu!" Mabel said as she placed her finger on the blender. "The Mabel Smoothie!"

Before she pressed the button, Dipper's eyes bulged as he noticed that she was about to start the blender without putting the cover back on. Dipper reached his hand out warningly, despite being across the room.

"Mabel, wait! You forgot to put on the cov-!"

It was too late. She pressed the button to blend and the blender went off, with its blending power strong enough to immediately begin creating a mess without the cover. Everyone tried to shield their faces with their arms as they stood back from the blender, with its mixed contents spraying everywhere throughout the room. In an effort to correct her mistake, Mabel quickly dove into the blender's eruption and aimed for the plug for a much more quick and definite solution. Ripping the cord from the wall, the blender immediately slowed until it shut off entirely, ending the problem.

At that point, the walls, floorboards, and other kitchen parts were dripping in Mabel's attempted smoothie. Dipper and Pacifica unshielded themselves to view the result of the mess and found their wardrobes also didn't get away unmarked by the smoothie. However, Mabel was nearly drenched in it due to her sacrifice in turning off the blender.

"Heh, well, at least the smoothie came out good!" Mabel awkwardly chuckled as she licked off some of the drops around her face. However, her smile quickly faded distastefully. "Nope. I take that back. It's awful. This was a mistake. I regret everything."

"Well, I guess this is more for us to clean up later, then," Dipper said as he looked around the room.

"Right.  _Later_ ," Pacifica emphasized as she waved her arms down to rid herself of some of the smoothie dripping down them. "How about we just dry up and hang out for a bit  _without_ making anymore messes?" she suggested as she walked over to the freezer.

"I mean, sure, but sooner or later, we're going to have to clean all this up," Dipper told her. "You know that, right?"

"Aw, relax, Dipper," Mabel said as she walked up to him. "The night is still young. We'll have plenty of time to clean up the place up."

"How's the night young?" Dipper asked, looking down at the time on his phone. "It's 3 A.M."

"Um, yeah? And for party people like us, that's considered young," Mabel said as she playfully punched him in the arm. "Just chill out."

"Yeah, Dipper," Pacifica said, her voice grabbing the attention of both twins. The two looked over at her and noticed her holding ice cream popsicle bags. She grinned as she tossed two bags over to the twins. She glanced over at Dipper, who looked over at her. " _Chill_  out."

Dipper and Mabel then smiled at one another excitedly before turning back to Pacifica, who stood confidently with her hands on her waist.

"Ice cream!" Mabel cheered as she opened up her bag and stuck the popsicle in her mouth. "Thanks, Pacifica!"

"I don't know what's happened to you, Pacifica, but you've been absolutely legendary tonight," Dipper said as he opened his popsicle bag more casually than Mabel. "Everything that we've done tonight seems like things you'd almost never have done last time we saw you."

"I don't know," Pacifica said as she thought about it and opened her own popsicle bag. "I guess after living by the same rules and formulas by my parents and by this job, I just felt like being a bit more rebellious tonight."

"No thanks to us, that is," Mabel commented, nudging Dipper.

"Sure," Pacifica hesitantly agreed as she sat herself up on the counter. "I guess I kind of owe it to you guys in a way for pointing out that I could get away with a lot more when doing these shifts."

"Still can't believe after all the times you've done this, you never thought you could get away with eating a pie or something while you were all alone," Mabel said with a chuckle as she ate her popsicle.

"Hey, you try having as much on your plate as I do!" Pacifica scolded. "Ever since we got rich again, it's not like I suddenly started living an easy life. Think of how much time I have to actually think when I've been stuck between school, work, dance classes, singing classes, mini-golf training, tennis training, and taking care of my pony. And soon, I'm also gonna have to worry about going back to croquet training. People think I have it easy again now that I have money, but it's more complicated than they think."

"Hold up!" Mabel jumped in, raising her popsicle in the air. "You have a pony?!"

"Is that seriously the only takeaway you got from everything I just said?" Pacifica asked, eyes narrowing in slight irritation.

"I mean, yeah, I feel bad about you being overloaded with all the classes and stuff, but I thought that was a given," Mabel said. "Now tell me about the pony! I NEEDZ TO KNOW!"

"I mean, there really isn't all that much to know," Pacifica said, trying to think about it. "I named him Mason and I got him not too long after you guys left Gravity Falls at the end of that summer. I was supposed to get like thirty of them, but then we lost all our money, so I ended up getting only one. But I've grown pretty attached to him over the years. He's, like, the sweetest thing in the world and he's been great to…"

Pacifica stopped herself upon hearing Mabel snickering. She looked up at her and saw that she was visibly trying to cover up her laugh. Dipper, on the other hand, stared forward with the most serious look on his face that she's ever seen from him.

She glanced back at Mabel and narrowed her eyes. "What?"

"No, no! I'm sorry!" Mabel apologized, trying to shield her amusement from her. "But if I may ask- what did you say you named your pony again?"

"Mabel, please…" Dipper pleaded without daring to make eye contact with her.

"Uh...Mason?" Pacifica replied to her in a confused tone.

" _PFFFFT…!_ " Mabel said as she tried to cover up her mouth and prevent herself from laughing. But at that point, she couldn't help herself and she just burst out laughing harder than she felt she ever had.

Pacifica stared at Mabel with the most confused look on her face, not having a clue what she was laughing about. But it obviously related to the name of her pony. She had no idea what was so funny about the name Mason though.

"What's so funny?" Pacifica asked her.

Mabel turned to Dipper mid-laugh. "You see, Dipper? She thinks  _Mason_  is the sweetest thing in the world!"

"Mabel, I'm begging you. Please…" Dipper said as his face reddened.

"I guess she's been spending four years getting pretty close to  _Mason_ , huh?!" Mabel joked before she continued to laugh uncontrollably. The joke prompted Dipper to grab onto the ears of his hat and pull it down over his face.

Pacifica's face began to redden out of potential embarrassment of still not knowing what the joke is, starting to believe that Mabel was just making fun of the name she had given her pony four years ago.

"Hey, you sure have a lot to laugh about a name when yours is  _Mabel_!" Pacifica struck back as she crossed her arms.

"You wish you knew why this is so funny to me!" Mabel exclaimed as she continued laughing.

She then found herself laughing so hard, she fell back against the counter behind herself and Dipper. She had fallen back so uncontrollably hard that it violently shook the entire counter. The violent shaking of the counter caused a pair of keys that was laid on the edge of the counter to then fall right off. Rather than falling onto the floor, the keys fell straight through a small hole in the floorboards and underneath the restaurant.

"MABEL!" Pacifica exclaimed in panic as she saw the keys fall through the floorboards.

Mabel's eyes were shut from all the laughing and failed to notice the keys fall into the hole. She wiped a humorous tear from her eye as she looked back up at Pacifica. "Relax, Pacifica. I'm just having a laugh." Pacifica then hopped down from the counter and ran over to the hole in the floorboard, violently pushing Mabel out of the way. "Hey!"

Pacifica then looked through the hole to try to spot the keys, but due to the darkness of the night, she couldn't see anything below the floor.

"Dammit, Mabel!" Pacifica scolded as she looked up from the hole. "Your obnoxious-self bumping into the counter caused the keys to the diner to fall straight through one of the holes in the floor!"

Realizing the shift in conversation, Dipper lifted his hat from his eyes and placed it back on his head normally. "Wait, one of  _the_ holes in the floor? You mean the holes are normal?"

Pacifica sighed. "Lazy Susan keeps holes in the floor around so she has a place to send the rats that come in."

"But wouldn't that mean they could just…" Dipper began.

"I know it's contradictory!" Pacifica cut off unnervingly. "It's just how Lazy Susan works! Her words, not mine!"

"Calm down, Pacifica," Mabel told her calmly. "They're just keys."

"Easy for you to say! I'm already risking my job by having you two here and making a mess of the place!" Pacifica scolded. "Lazy Susan told me not to lose those keys. She may be dim-witted, but she's not dim-witted enough  _not_  to fire me for something like this!"

"Well, for the record, you've helped cause just as much of a mess as us," Mabel reminded her as she crossed her arms. "And you kept us around rather than kicking us out!"

"I tried to tell you both to go away when you guys got here!" Pacifica argued. "But I figured that I knew you both well enough to trust that you wouldn't risk screwing me out of my job- which is the only escape from my family's rich life that I have left! You two are going to be the reason I lose it!"

"Alright, so  _maybe_  we're  _sort of_  eligible for blame here," Mabel admitted. "But don't put all of the blame of losing your job on us when it was you who allowed us to come in and joined us in making these messes. You didn't have to trust us with anything!"

"So you're saying I shouldn't trust you anymore?" Pacifica asked, getting irritated with Mabel's arguing. "Because I'm getting real close to agreeing with you!"

"Enough!" Dipper intervened frustratedly. "Geez, do I always gotta be the one to break up these kinds of deals?" He walked over to the side and grabbed a crowbar that was laying on top of a counter. "Look, if you two wanna argue about the issue instead of solving it, then go ahead. I'm just gonna pry the floorboard open and reach for the keys. Problem solved." He then looked down at the crowbar in his hands and back over at the counter it was originally set on. "Also, that is a  _very_  open spot for a crowbar. Also, why do you guys even have a crowbar?"

"What? No!" Pacifica said, quickly swiping the crowbar from his hands. "I can clean up a bunch of goops and glops on the walls overnight, but I can't replace a floorboard! Prying is  _not_  an option."

"So what do you suggest then?" Mabel asked, raising her hand up. "Because none of our hands are fitting through that hole."

Dipper walked over to his backpack, which was placed to the side, and pulled out a flashlight. He then returned to the hole the keys fell through and kneeled down next to it. He turned on the light and aimed it toward the hole so he could see inside. The dirt ground beneath the diner was lit up and he was able to glance around to see what was under. However, he couldn't spot the keys.

Suddenly, he looked straight down and notice that there was actually a little deeper hole in the ground directly underneath the floorboard hole. Glancing around once more, he verified that there was no other place the keys could've possibly gone. They must've gone deeper into the ground and the only way to retrieve them would be digging into the dirt hole itself.

"Do you see them?" Pacifica asked hopefully.

He kneeled back up and looked over at the girls. "Well, here's the issue- there's another small hole in the ground right underneath the floorboards that the keys must've fallen into."

"Are you serious?" Pacifica asked before groaning irritatedly.

"So, who feels like crawling under the diner and pulling a pair of keys from the ground?" Mabel asked, believing that was their only choice at that point.

"I guess that's one idea..." Dipper claimed as he walked back over to his backpack.

He opened it and pulled out a long rope and another flashlight. The second flashlight, however, had a shiny blue crystal tied to the front of it. The height-altering flashlight and rope were originally packed for the vampire bat adventure. However, to Dipper, it looked as though they would be just as much of use for the current scenario.

"...but luckily, I have another," he finished with a smirk as he showed the gear to the two.

* * *

Within the hour, Dipper stood by the hole with the long rope wrapped tightly around his waist. Mabel was testing the knot's strength by tugging on the long leftover end of it, pulling Dipper lightly, but not seeming to loosen up the rope itself. Pacifica was in the background, pacing around nervously as she thought about the current plan they were about to execute.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Pacifica asked him, as she walked over to him. "Because I'm starting to agree with Mabel's suggestion. Maybe we should just crawl under the diner. This seems like overkill."

"It'll be fiiiiine, Pacifica," Mabel assured her.

"Yeah, trust me. I can handle this," Dipper nodded. "I'm just gonna shrink down so I can fit through the floorboards and go into the burrow below. I'll shrink down the keys when I spot them and then Mabel will pull me back up when I'm finished and I'll go back to normal size."

"Yeah, that definitely sounds like overkill," Pacifica repeated, crossing her arms skeptically at his reassurance.

"Well, it's not the first time I've done this kinda thing before, so just don't worry," Dipper said.

"Yeah, and I'm sure it'll be a trip down memory lane back to when you were the short twin!" Mabel jabbed as she nudged him in the arm, referring back to the point in time where she used to be the taller twin before puberty started taking its toll on him and his height.

" _Ha-ha_ ," Dipper laughed sarcastically as he put on his backpack. "Anyways, are we gonna do this or not?"

"Well, this reflective fridge is probably the closest thing to a full body mirror we have," Pacifica said as she walked over to the fridge and it's metallic surface.

"That should do," Dipper said as he walked over to the fridge, readying the height-altering flashlight. He turned back to Mabel. "Got the rope, Mabel?"

Mabel bent down and held onto the other end of the rope, getting a tight grasp on it. "Got it! Oh, and remember to use your walkie!"

That was an important heads-up for Dipper, as he remembered to take out his walkie-talkie from his bag for communication purposes when under the diner. "Oh right. Thanks, Mabel." He then turned back toward the fridge and sighed nervously at the thought of shrinking down again, but knew it had to be done to help Pacifica out, and so he couldn't back down now. He stood right in front of the fridge and aimed the flashlight at its reflective surface and his slightly distorted reflection. "Here goes nothing."

As he flipped the switch of the flashlight, which sent out a light with a pink hue as the light collided with the crystal, which prompted Pacifica to leave the room in fear of something possibly happening to her. As Dipper planned, the light bounced off the surface of the fridge and shined on him and everything else he had on him. He slowly began to shrink down the longer he held the light on himself. After a brief moment of shrinking, he turned the light off and found himself to have become relatively small, tinier than the leg of the fridge.

"That should do it," he said to himself as he looked around.

He was then startled by a sudden stomping on the ground, which sent him bouncing in the air for a brief second. He turned around and looked up to see a giant Mabel walking up to him. Despite knowing it was his sister, she looked quite menacing as this giant figure. That was until she had the instinct to pick him up by the rope that was still tied to him and view him up close, putting on a wide grin that instantly made her less intimidating.

"Haha! Wow! I think he's even tinier than when we first got shrunk down!" Mabel chuckled as she viewed him.

Despite not finding her to be as intimidating, the height she had raised Dipper to relative to his current size was absolutely terrifying. He felt as though he was about to get dropped into the middle of the Grand Canyon.

He quickly grabbed his walkie-talkie in panic and turned it on. "MABEL! MABEL!"

Mabel heard her walkie-talkie going off on the counter beside her and grabbed it, listening to it intently.

"MABEL! PUT ME DOWN!" a high-pitched voice exclaimed from the walkie.

Mabel snickered at the voice. "Aw! Your voice is so cute at that size! You sound like a chipmunk!"

This statement confused Dipper. To him, his voice sounded fine. However, as he heard himself through the walkie-talkie, he noticed his pitch was higher as Mabel implied. He was unsure if this was an issue with the walkie itself or if the smaller size he had shrunk down to had a greater effect on his vocals when making contact with certain radio frequencies. Nonetheless, he didn't find it all that amusing. Especially when he was still hanging from such a height.

"Hilarious," Dipper sarcastically said through the talkie as he rolled his eyes. "NOW PUT ME DOWN!"

Mabel quickly did as he requested and placed him on the counter. She glanced around the room for Pacifica before remembering that she had left the room for her own safety. "You can come back now, Pacifica!" she called out from the kitchen.

Pacifica reentered the room cautiously, glancing around to see what had been done. She didn't notice any particular changes right away until her eyes darted toward the counter Mabel stood beside, spotting tiny Dipper.

"Oh my God," Pacifica said in shock and slight amusement as she walked up to the counter.

"Yep. That's Little Dipper," Mabel told her as they looked down at him. "Same ol' Dipper at a not so same ol' size."

"Yep. It's a flashlight that I customized to be able to function with a height-altering crystal that we found in the forest," Dipper explained to Pacifica through the walkie-talkie. "The way it works is by taking the light and…"

"Pffft...I'm sorry, I cannot take you seriously with that voice," Pacifica said, beginning to laugh at Dipper's high-pitched voice as well. "Not that I even cared about what you were saying in the first place, but hey, it's nice to know your big, dork brain is still intact at that size."

"Heh, yeah!" Mabel chuckled in agreement. "Glad to see he's not... _short_...on his knowledge! HEY-O!" she joked as she raised her hand for Pacifica to high five. However, she just stared back at her with a clear look of distaste for her attempted humor.

"Hey, when you two are done joking about my height, could someone please put me in the hole so we can get this over with already?" Dipper asked as the constant height jokes were beginning to make him feel like he was twelve again.

Mabel picked him back up by the rope he attached to himself, which, to her, was like a piece of really long string at its shortened size. She and Pacifica walked over to the hole, where Mabel kneeled down on the floor and hovered Dipper right above it. She gently began to lower him down, slowly letting go of his end of the tiny rope.

As Dipper was lowered down, he held onto the rope with one hand and reached for his normal flashlight with the other. The lower he went underneath the diner, the darker it got. Not that his tiny flashlight would be able to provide enough illuminance in the giant space he was being placed into, but having some sort of light to help guide him was better than nothing.

Eventually, he touched the ground, having been lowered below the hole and into the burrow the keys had supposedly fallen into. He unholstered his walkie. "Okay, I'm in."

He took a few steps forward before finding himself suddenly being yanked back violently multiple times. He was thrown backward until he fell on his face when the yanking suddenly stopped. He groaned in pain as he pulled himself up from the ground, grabbing the walkie again.

"Mabel, what the hell was that?!" Dipper exclaimed.

He waited a second for a response. "Sorry! I started laughing again when I heard your voice."

"Just put the rope down for now," he ordered her. "Watch it instead. I know it's lengthy, but just in case, make sure the other end doesn't fall in here with me so you can pull me back up when I'm done."

"Roger that, Lil' Roger," Mabel replied jokingly.

"Hey, now that you're down there, do you see the keys?" Pacifica asked him, grabbing the walkie away from Mabel. "They can't have fallen that far."

Dipper pointed his flashlight forward before aiming around the burrow. He expected to see the keys pretty instantly as Pacifica thought, not believing it could've gone that far either. However, he didn't see them anywhere. At his current size, the keys should've been seen quickly, being obviously bigger than him. But, he found nothing besides the dirt walls of the burrow around him.

"Uhh, no," Dipper replied through the walkie as he kept looking around. "I don't see them."

"What?! How?" Pacifica asked. "They were dropped straight into the hole. Where else could they have gone?"

"I don't know," Dipper said, wondering himself. "I'm just gonna just go forward a bit and see if they somehow went farther than we thought."

"How would they? It's not like keys have the ability to bounce or anything," Pacifica said.

"Gee, I don't know. It's not like I studied the physics of keys in Physics class," Dipper replied with an eye roll.

Pacifica sighed at Dipper's snarky response. "Just find the keys. And, you know, don't die."

"No promises," Dipper responded, with the walkie's static returning to Pacifica at the end of his transmission.

"Awwww! Look at you- showing how much you care about my brother," Mabel said as she pressed her own cheeks together.

"Yeah, because if he dies, then that means I have to send  _you_  after the keys instead," Pacifica told her. "And given the already little faith that I have in him, putting any faith in you is just kissing my job goodbye."

"Aw c'mon, Pacifica. When are you just gonna admit that you love us and that we're your friends?" Mabel asked. "We may have been kinda-sorta rivals four years ago, but we were kids then! We're teens now! We've matured and grown past all the bad times, haven't we? Can't we just call ourselves friends at this point?"

"I'm not too convinced friends make fun of the name they gave their pet and then childishly knock their work keys into an unreachable hole," Pacifica said as she folded her arms.

"Oh boy, we're going back to this, aren't we?" Mabel said to herself under her breath. "Firstly, the 'keys falling into the hole' thing was clearly an accident. Second off…" she tried to explain before bursting out chuckling again. "...I wasn't making fun of the name of your pony."

"Then what were you laughing about?" Pacifica asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, you  _probably_  don't want to know, otherwise it would  _probably_  be really awkward for you," Mabel tried to explain. "Also, I'm  _kind of_  not allowed to tell you."

"Oh, so a 'friend' who also keeps secrets, huh?" Pacifica said, not satisfied with her answer.

"Trust me, girl, I think this is a secret you'll greatly appreciate being kept from you," Mabel chuckled, understanding what she was trying to do. "But hey! You finally referred to me as a friend, so that's something!"

"What? I was being sarcastic!" Pacifica told her defensively.

"Friends are always sarcastic with one another! You should see me and my friends back in Piedmont," Mabel said, putting her hand on Pacifica's shoulder. "Sometimes, we really lay it out on one another!"

Pacifica pushed Mabel's hand off of her shoulder. "We are not friends."

"Really?" Mabel skeptically asked.

"Yes! We aren't and we never were!" Pacifica tried to convince her.

"Why'd you get me and my brother birthday presents last time we saw each other then?" Mabel pressed.

"I don't know," Pacifica shrugged. "Because you two had just saved the world, so it was me saying 'Thanks for that, by the way.'"

"Alright, well, what about you eventually allowing us into your job tonight? Besides the key nonsense, is all the fun we had tonight just you hanging out with non-friends?"

"Fine, I admit…" Pacifica said, starting to give in.

"Ha! So we  _are_  friends!" Mabel jubilantly cut off.

"...that we're close acquaintances," Pacifica finished.

Mabel's jubilance immediately shut down with this finished statement, and she found herself slightly disappointed. But she still felt determined to get Pacifica to admit they're friends at some point. She knew that she was too afraid to admit that it was true, but she clearly wasn't going to get to her now.

"You know...you're pretty good at this," Mabel commended.

"Thanks," Pacifica nodded with a smirk. There was a brief moment of silence between the two before she felt the need to clear the air. "We're still not friends."

"MABEL... _chhhhhhhhhh_...PACIFICA?!" Dipper's high-pitched, panicked voice emerged from Mabel's crackling walkie-talkie. "HELLO?!"

Mabel quickly grabbed the walkie-talkie from the counter. "Dipper?" she asked, concern in her voice. "What's happening?"

"THERE ARE... _chhhhhh_...EVERYWHERE! THEY'RE CHASING AFTER... _chhhhhhhhhhhhh_...NEED HELP... _chhhhhhh_...THE KEYS... _chhhhhhh_...THEY GOT ME... _chhhhhhh_...MABEL!"

A bunch of odd crumbling noises came from the walkie-talkie after his message, with no more traces of his voice before fading into normal silence. Mabel's eyes displayed concern after hearing his call for help, not knowing how to react.

"Dipper?" Mabel asked nervously. "Dipper, it's Mabel. Are you still there? Over." She waited for a response, but silence was all that emerged from the walkie.

"Quick! The rope!" Pacifica reminded her, pointing down to shrunk down rope on the floor that was being dragged into the hole at that very moment. Mabel turned her head down to see that the other end of the rope had slipped down into the hole, meaning it was too late.

"Uh, oh," Mabel said nervously.

"Uh, oh?" Pacifica asked, concern obviously displayed on her face. "Your brother may have just gotten eaten alive by a bunch of big, ugly bugs and all you have to say is 'uh, oh'?"

"Dipper's fine. Most likely," Mabel assured her as she holstered her walkie-talkie. "I'm not worried about him. What we need to worry about now is having to go down that hole ourselves like you said."

" _Ourselves?_  What makes you think I'm going down into an insect-infested dirt hole with you?" Pacifica asked, disgusted by the very idea.

"I mean if Dipper and I  _do_  die and you're cool with cleaning the whole diner up on your own, as well as having no way to get the keys yourself, then feel free to stay behind," Mabel told her bluntly as she started organizing her backpack and stuffing various foods from the diner into it. "Meanwhile, if we go together, we can back each other up instead of going through this alone. Besides, it's all-in-all a generally better idea anyway, but hey! You do you."

Pacifica processed the points Mabel was trying to make and realized she was right. She sighed and rolled her eyes as she decided to give in to her idea. "Fine. I'll go with you. But I'm not gonna have fun."

"Who said anything about having fun?" Mabel asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I know how you are. You're always trying to lighten up a situation with your gimmicks and silly ideas. Just like during the weirdpocalypse," Pacifica explained.

"Hey, that's just how I am," Mabel said with a smug smile as she put on her backpack. "I'm not forcing anyone else to partake in my ideas. Sure, they may save your life and all, but that's your decision to make. Not mine." She walked into the kitchen, gesturing for her to follow along. "C'mon. Let's get going."

"Wait, doesn't Dipper have the shrinking-flashlight thingy?" Pacifica asked, curious how they're to follow.

"You see, Dipper likes to make it seem like he's got the only tools for everything," Mabel explained as she pulled out her own height-altering flashlight from her bag. "But since we got back to Gravity Falls, he's been having me hold onto spares for our adventures just in case." She pointed the flashlight at the reflective fridge and pulled Pacifica beside her so she would be in the flashlight's effective range. "Buddy up!"

She flipped the flashlight on and a pink light hit the reflective surface of the fridge, bouncing right off and hitting the two girls. The two began shrinking down until Mabel stopped the light, making sure they were at about a similar height to Dipper when he shrunk down.

"Look! We're so puny!" Mabel said as she looked up and around at the giant diner.

"This is terrifying," Pacifica said as she looked around in horror.

"Ah, don't worry," Mabel told her. "At least there's no one else around to step on us."

"Yeah, well, can we just get on with this mission already?" Pacifica asked, not patient enough for their current banter.

The two walked up to the hole, which was a few normal-sized feet away from them, which made for a bit of a walk. However, once they got there, they peeked inside from up above. It was dark and they couldn't really see what was down there. Luckily, they could barely see the entrance into the small burrow they had to reach in order to follow and find Dipper.

"That's a long way down," Mabel pointed out.

"Yeah, so how are we gonna get down there?" Pacifica asked.

"I have an idea," Mabel said, as she stroked her chin. "You're probably gonna hate me  _just_  a bit for it though."

"What are you talking…" Pacifica began to ask before Mabel suddenly wrapped her arm around Pacifica's waist and pulled her along as she jumped straight into the hole without warning. "... _ABOUUUUUUT?!_ "

While Pacifica screamed in terror as they fell, Mabel pulled out her old grappling hook and aimed it upwards before firing. The hook went soaring back up before latching itself onto the top of the diner's wooden floorboard where the hole was. It stuck as they kept falling and they began to slow down on their descent.

Pacifica's screaming stopped and she looked up at Mabel's grappling hook and how they were falling slower. She then narrowed her eyes angrily at Mabel, giving her the most fed up look. "I  _really_  don't like you."

Mabel smiled smugly as they descended. "Yeah, I kinda figured you wouldn't," she admitted. "Although, I knew there was no way I was going to convince you to grapple down with me, so I kind of had to force it this one time."

"You're right. You  _wouldn't_  have convinced me," Pacifica admitted, although this didn't make her any less bitter about it all.

The two then entered the burrow, slowly coming up on the bottom. Once her feet made contact with the dirt of the bottom, Mabel promptly let go of Pacifica, who stumbled a few steps due to the slight shock from Mabel's sudden actions. Mabel then recovered the grappling hook back from above before putting it away. She then took out her own normal flashlight and turned it on, aiming around the burrow.

"Yeesh, this place is kinda creepy looking," Mabel said as she looked around.

"Is there any sign of Dipper?" Pacifica asked as she stepped beside her.

Mabel bobbed her head forward and gave a few audible sniffs, prompting Pacifica to give her a weird look. After a few more sniffs, she started walking forward in one direction of the burrow. "He's this way."

"How do you know?" Pacifica asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Once you've spent seventeen years living with a brother, you eventually come to identify him by the distant scent of his B.O.," she explained to her as she kept walking.

Pacifica gave a slightly disgusted look at this statement before she started following her. "Glad I'm an only child."

* * *

Mabel and Pacifica continued their way through the tunneling burrows, not finding anything particularly strange, dangerous, or worth pointing out so far. Mabel's ability to trace Dipper's B.O. was the only thing guiding them. She was relatively calm during the mission, but Pacifica was becoming progressively more uncomfortable and nervous as they kept walking.

"Is his scent, like, getting any stronger?" Pacifica uncomfortably asked. "Actually, forget that. Are we getting any closer?"

"You know just as much as I do, sis," Mabel told her. "I'm just following my nose."

"What?!" Pacifica asked. "So we don't even know if we're going the right way?"

"Oh no, we're going the right way," Mabel nodded. "I just have no idea how close we are."

"God, it feels like we've been walking forever," Pacifica said, trying to ignore the growing soreness of her legs. Dipper was only in here for like three minutes when he called for our help. We've been here longer and we haven't found or seen anything! Who knows what made these tunnels? We could be walking for ages!"

Before she could respond to Pacifica's ramble, Mabel suddenly stopped walking in place as she started paying attention to her nose. She then bobbed her head forward again to sniff around.

"What are you doing?" Pacifica asked, weirded out yet again by Mabel's sniffing.

"Answering your first question," Mabel told her, as she stopped sniffing. "Dipper's scent  _is_  getting stronger."

"That's a question I told you to forget about," Pacifica said, somewhat disgusted by this reveal.

"Well, that means we're getting closer after all," Mabel said, smiling confidently. She then started running through the tunnel. "C'mon! Let's go!"

"Running? Through dirt? Ugh. I thought we were done getting dirty after the Mabel Smoothie," Pacifica said in disgust as she followed quickly, albeit more cautiously behind Mabel.

It wasn't a long run, as Mabel turned a few round corners in the tunnels before reaching a crossroad section between multiple tunnels. Being under the diner, the light from above slightly illuminated the burrow through the crevices in the floorboards. She stopped in place as she gasped at what she spotted in the center of the room.

"Pacifica! Look!" Mabel called out behind her.

It took a moment before Pacifica caught up to her and reached the crossroads. But once she did, she had just about the same reaction and gasped once she saw that in the center, the giant diner keys laid.

"The keys!" Pacifica exclaimed happily. However, she immediately started to question the circumstances. "But how did they get so far inside from where you dropped them?"

"Who knows and who cares? Let's shrink em, grab em, and then move on to finding Dipper!" Mabel told her.

Pacifica turned to her and nodded, but her eyes suddenly bulged as they darted to something behind Mabel. "Uh, Mabel?" she said fearfully as she pointed behind her.

Mabel looked behind her back and noticed a black figure standing right behind her. She quickly turned all the way around to face it directly before fearfully and quietly backing up a few steps beside Pacifica. Emerging from the shadows of the tunnel was none other than a giant ant.

"What do we do?" Pacifica whispered to her somewhat panicked.

"Relax! It's just an ant!" Mabel whispered back. "They're nothing to be scared of!"

"That ant is bigger than us!" Pacifica quietly pointed out as she narrowed her eyes at her. "And why are you whispering too if there's nothing to be scared of?"

"Better to be safe than sorry," Mabel shrugged.

Suddenly, the two looked up at the tunnel the ant came from and saw that there were more ants crawling on the walls and the top of the tunnel. In the current view, there were about a total of twenty ants making their way toward them.

"Actually, I think I'd rather be more sorry than safe!" Mabel exclaimed, breaking out of her whispering voice as she started walking backward again. She then turned around and started running. "RUN PACIFICA!"

Pacifica followed her call and started running with her as well, but noticed that they were running past the keys. "Wait! What about the keys?"

"We'll come back for them!" Mabel called back as she started running toward one of the other tunnels. "Let's just head this way!"

"MABEL, LOOK OUT!" Pacifica called out to her, pointing ahead at the tunnel she was running toward.

As Mabel turned forward again, she parked her heels down and slid forward a bit before coming to a stop. In the tunnel, many more ants began to emerge and walk toward her.

She glanced at one of the other tunnels in the crossroads as she started walking backward yet again. "Alright, let's try that one instead!" she pointed out to Pacifica.

"You sure about that?!" Pacifica questioned as ants suddenly began to emerge from that tunnel as well at that same moment.

"And the other…?" Mabel asked, looking at the final accessible tunnel. But soon, ants began to spout from it as well, leaving the girls with no means of escape. "Aw, c'mon!"

The girls began walking back toward the center of the crossing tunnel paths where the giant keys laid. From all four tunnels, the ants continued to pour out and surround the girls. Pacifica fearfully looked around, believing they were just about done for.

She then glanced over at Mabel and noticed her backpack. "Do you not have anything else in your bag that we could use?"

Mabel's eyes bulged in realization. "Wait, maybe I do!"

She quickly took her backpack off and opened up one of the zippers. Diving inside, she grabbed an armful of wooden stakes. She looked at the surrounding ants and threw the stakes one-by-one at them as they got closer. However, each stake just bounced off of the ants without seeming to cause any sort of physical harm. She eventually ran out stakes and noticed how they were doing nothing.

"What was that?!" Pacifica asked frustratedly at the uselessness of Mabel's defense.

"It's like the only other weapon I had packed for the vampire bat hunt!" Mabel defended. "The other weapon being the flashlight!" she said as she took out her normal flashlight again. "Ants don't like bright lights, do they?"

Before she could get any sort of answer to her question, an ant suddenly stomped right in front of Mabel, startling her, and causing her to flinch as she grabbed her backpack and retreated back toward the keys in fear. She and Pacifica grouped up as the ants continued getting closer toward the two.

"You mean you have absolutely nothing else that we can use against them?" Pacifica asked frantically, close to just giving up.

"I packed a bunch of food from the diner, but that was for me to bring back to the Shack when we were done!" Mabel told her. "Other than that...yeah, that's about it."

"Great. I'll be the first Northwest to die by giant ants," Pacifica groaned.

"That'd be another family milestone for you, wouldn't it?" Mabel asked cheerily.

"It wouldn't surprise me, honestly," Pacifica said glumly.

The two looked back up and saw the giant ants walking directly in front of them, and their panic reignited. The two girls screamed loudly in fear, instinctively hugging one another as the hundreds of giant ants flooded the room to approach them.

 


	20. Night At The Diner: Part 3

Mabel and Pacifica screamed in terror as the giant ants got closer and closer toward the two. At that point, they had basically accepted their fate of potentially being eaten alive by giant ants, having instinctively embraced one another as the ants neared.

However, the ants walked up to the girls and started examining them closely rather than attacking them. However, the girls kept screaming, unaware that they were being examined. Pacifica eventually had an odd sense of nothing happening to her yet and opened her eyes to see the neutral-stance ants. She calmed down slightly as she processed that they were just staring at her rather than attacking.

However, Mabel was still screaming for her life. Pacifica's eyes darted over to her and saw that she also had her eyes shut tightly and wasn't aware of what was happening.

"Mabel!" she quietly exclaimed, grabbing her attention.

Mabel's screaming instantly stopped, and her eyelids flew open. Her eyes immediately darted to Pacifica. "Are we dead yet?" she casually asked.

Pacifica's eyes narrowed slightly as she pushed Mabel's arms off of her, ending their death-instinctive embrace. "No, you moron. Look!" she said, pointing around at the surrounding ants. The ants continued to just stare at the two, not even reacting to their conversation. "The ants aren't doing anything. That's good, right?"

"How should I know?" Mabel asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You've dealt with a bunch of weird stuff before," Pacifica told her. "I figured this was along those lines."

"This isn't even weirdness. They're normal ants. We just shrunk down to their size," Mabel reminded her. "Even then, what makes you think I know how to speak ant?"

"Well, considering you know how to speak pig, is it really that far-fetched to believe you speak just about any animal?" Pacifica asked.

"Alright, maybe I do know how to speak to a lot of animals, but even then, you're still greatly overestimating my abilities," Mabel told her as she folded her arms.

Suddenly, a single ant stepped forward and got up close to the two, causing them to shriek in fear as they flinched back defensively. The ant used its antennae to smell them as it continued to examine them. Afterwards, it tilted its head toward another ant and made some noises. Mabel and Pacifica glanced at one another nervously without moving a muscle.

"This is weird," Pacifica said quietly as she looked around at the ants. "Why are they just standing there?"

"Would you rather be eaten?" Mabel asked quietly.

"I would rather get out of here," Pacifica replied.

At that same moment, the ant that was smelling them before turned back toward them and leaned its head forward and bit down on the back of the collar of Pacifica's diner dress, picking her off the ground, prompting her to start screaming in terror again.

"PACIFICA!" Mabel screamed out, reaching her hand forward to her as she saw her getting picked up.

She started squirming around as she hung from the back of her dress collar, trying to hopefully free herself from its grasp. It wasn't successful, however, and the ant proceeded to walk off with her through a path cleared out through the surrounding ants.

"MABEL! MABEL HELP!" her voice echoed through the tunnel she was then taken into, her screams quietly fading away as the ant made a speedy getaway.

"I'm not really sure how!" Mabel called out to her. "But, I mean, at least you got out of here like you wanted!"

She knew it was a really bad and inappropriate joke to crack at the current moment, but she was absolutely terrified by what was happening and couldn't think of a way to properly react. Pacifica was right about what her always trying to lighten up situations, especially when it really wasn't necessary. She then looked around at the ants that surrounded her now that she was now on her own.

"So, uh, how are you guys doing?" she casually asked the ants, while still internally terrified. "Or are you all girls? No, wait, the only female ant's the queen, right? Man, I am so off with my ant knowledge. I guess I need to get better at  _anthology!_ " She smiled, glancing back and forth between the surrounding ants as if she was expecting some sort of applause for that joke. "I'm just kidding. That word actually has nothing to do with ants."

Her attempt at small talk was suddenly disrupted when another ant behind her swooped its head down and picked her up by the back of her sweater collar, walking toward the same tunnel Pacifica was taken into.

"HEY! WATCH THE FABRIC! This stuff ain't cheap! And I don't have  _nearly_  as much money as the blonde you just took!" Mabel exclaimed as she was carried off, with all the other previously surrounding ants following the ant carrying her into the dark tunnel she was taken into.

* * *

After some time of being carried through darkness, Mabel saw a light at the end of the dark tunnel that she was being taken through. Once they exited it, she looked above and her eyes bulged in amazement. There were large open tunnels and paths stacked on top of dirt hills around in a large, spacious room of sorts. In each tunnel and on each path, there were hundreds of ants crawling and making their way around. To her, it looked like being inside a giant ant farm.

She saw they were stood on one of many large dirt-molded bridges with a large platform in the center that the ants were taking her to. Up ahead on the platform, she quickly saw the ant that was holding Pacifica come to a stop. She looked like she was alright. Absolutely terrified, of course, but unharmed.

The ant carrying her then stepped up right next to Pacifica's ant and stopped, lining the two up.

"Pacifica!" Mabel called out.

Pacifica's head turned toward Mabel as she hung from the ant's mouth. She looked at her in surprise. "Mabel! What's going on?! Why are we here?!"

"Beats me," Mabel shrugged.

"Why haven't they just eaten us already?!" Pacifica asked, panicked. "Is this some sort of sacrifice? Or are they going to bring the queen out and feed us to it instead?" She then put her face in her hands. "Oh god, why did I ever let you and your brother stay in the diner?"

"Would you just relax already? C'mon," Mabel pleaded her.

"Relax? We're dangling from ant mouths right now! How can you possibly be relaxed?!" Pacifica snapped.

"Because right now, we're dangling from ant mouths!" Mabel restated. "Obviously, we're here for a reason. Keep squirming and they might change their minds."

Pacifica took these words to mind and processed them. She stopped moving around so violently and immediately let herself hang loose, not wanting to risk making the ant carrying her upset as Mabel implied.

Across the dirt bridge, there were a bunch of ants walking over to the center platform they stood at. They soon lined up on the platform, forming a wall of ants right in front of the girls. Ants from the back started stepping aside one by one to let a single figure in the center step forward. Mabel and Pacifica anxiously awaited the presence of the being that is to approach them, wondering if it will decide their fate. The front ants then stepped aside and right before their eyes stood Dipper, dressed up in a brown robe and a black helmet with two antennae sticking out, resembling an ant's head.

Dipper's eyes bulged in surprise when he saw the two girls. "Mabel?! Pacifica?!"

Mabel and Pacifica's mouths hung open in pure shock at the sight of Dipper and his odd apparel. "DIPPER?!"

"Ha! You're actually here!" Dipper exclaimed thankfully as he stepped forward to the two. He then looked up at the two ants carrying them. "You guys- you can let them go! They're friends!"

As requested, the ants placed Mabel and Pacifica back down on the ground and let go of them. Mabel and Pacifica both weirdly looked back and forth between the ants and Dipper himself.

"You have no idea how happy I am to see you guys!" Dipper said as he walked up to the girls.

"Yeah! It's good to see you all and stuff, bro-bro, but if you don't mind- could you please tell us WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!" Mabel asked abruptly.

"Yeah, are we just going to skip the part where you just talked to the ants and they  _understood_ you?" Pacifica asked, also wanting to know what was going on.

"And that getup," Mabel said, eyeballing Dipper's robe and ant helmet. "Seriously, do we even need to ask?"

"Look, I'm gonna be honest, I don't know too much either," Dipper admitted, scratching the back of his head. "I was running from these guys until they cornered me in one of their tunnels. Then they took me to the center of their colony and gave me this robe and put this, uhhh, crown...on top of my head," he explained, pointing to his ant helmet. "And so, I guess I'm some sort of...I don't know...ant king?"

"Ants don't have kings, genius," Mabel pointed out. "They only have queens."

"Yeah, well, they have a queen already, so unless you have a better idea of what this all means, then I'm settling with king for now," Dipper told her. "Plus, ant king kind of sounds cool."

"Maybe they made him the jester and they're just waiting for him to make a joke," Pacifica joked over to Mabel, who started to giggle.

"A joke? From Dipper? They're gonna have to sit back and keep waiting then because it's gonna be awhile," Mabel chuckled.

As the two girls began laughing at their mockery of Dipper, he simply stood there and sighed, taking the shots. The fact that the first thing the girls do upon seeing him again was make fun of him didn't surprise him, although he can't say he didn't hope for a more appreciative reunion. Then again, it has only been about half hour since they last saw each other on the surface so there wasn't a lot of time to 'miss' one another.

Suddenly, Dipper started to hear a bunch of loud static noises. Mabel and Pacifica appeared to have heard the noises too, as they immediately stopped laughing. Without the laughing, the direction of the static noises became a bit more distinguishable, and so Dipper and Pacifica's eyes darted toward Mabel. She looked up at the two, appearing just as confused as they were.

"Mabel, what's that sound?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It sounds like my walkie-talkie," she assumed as she brought her backpack forward and dug through it. She then pulled out her walkie, which turned out to be the source of the static. "It's receiving something. Is your walkie on?"

"I dropped my walkie long ago when I was running from these things," Dipper told her as he gestured toward the surrounding ants.

"Why's it going off now then?" Pacifica asked as Mabel put her ear up to the speaker.

Mabel's eyes bulged as she listened in on the static closely. "GUYS! I hear voices!"

"Voices?" Dipper asked, eyes bulging.

"SHHH!" Mabel shushed as she continued to listen closely.

Dipper walked up closer to her to hear the sound better. Soon, he was also able to distinguish voices as she had said. Lots of voices. All of them were layered upon one another as if they were listening in on a crowded stadium full of people talking. Because of this, it was hard to make out any specific words, but it sounded like English.

"Where is this receiving from?" Mabel asked, completely unsure where the voices could possibly be coming from in their current location.

Dipper took the walkie away from Mabel and put his own ear close to it, trying to figure out himself. He was also wondering the same question as her, but couldn't come up with a logical answer. However, as he continued listening in on the voices, he was able to make out a few words from one particular voice.

" _I think they're listening to us._ "

Dipper's eyes bulged as he heard this, pulling his head away from the walkie in shock. Mabel and Pacifica both noticed this action.

"What happened?" Mabel asked him, concerned. "What did you hear?"

He was too shocked to answer, dismissing her question and looking up from the walkie. He turned his head toward the surrounding ants, looking at each and every one of them. He then pressed his ear against the walkie again.

" _The boy is looking at us._ "

" _He looks scared._ "

" _Do you think they can finally hear us?_ "

" _I don't know._ "

Dipper turned his head back to Mabel and Pacifica. "Guys…" he said as he turned back to the girls. "The voices...they're coming from the ants!"

" _They CAN hear us. We gotta do something._ "

"What? The ants aren't talking," Mabel said, chuckling at the oddity of Dipper's revelation. "Look at them. Do you see them talking at all?"

" _EVERYONE! EVERYONE! SETTLE DOWN!_ "

Mabel's humored smile faded away as she turned back toward Dipper, who promptly held out the walkie-talkie to her. She then looked up at the ants in disbelief. As for the voices, they began to quiet down in the walkie as commanded by the other voice.

"Okay, this is starting to freak me out," Pacifica said as she looked around at the ants as well.

" _Please, don't be freaked out_ ," a single, monotone voice emerged from the walkie. At the same time, a single ant stepped forward from a line of ants right behind Pacifica.

The three looked up at the standout ant in shock. Frightened, Pacifica retreated beside Dipper, thinking back to how he was the one who commanded them to put her and Mabel down.

"So...talking ants…" Mabel claimed dryly and nervously as she gave in to the ridiculous idea. "This is a new one."

"How is this possible?" Dipper asked the ant. "Are you some abnormal type of hyper-intelligent ant species that have the ability to telepathically communicate with technical devices?"

" _Actually, we're just normal garden ants_ ," the ant revealed. " _We're not actually talking with you either. We're simply communicating our thoughts via our antennae to the signal we receive on the device you call 'walkie-talkie'._ "

"The walkie's antenna," Dipper realized as he examined the device in his hands, where all of the ant's words were coming from.

" _I apologize. I believe we, as ants, should formally introduce ourselves to your kind. I assume this all must be incredibly jarring for the three of you_ ," the ant told the three.

"Gee, you think?" Pacifica asked sarcastically.

" _My name is Ant-hony_ ," the ant introduced. " _This is our colony. We've been settled in this here location for approximately fifty years. I myself have only been around for seven. As you can see though, I'm only one of exactly seven hundred million, three hundred and fifty-six thousand, four hundred and two garden ants. That is until tonight when our queen lays about three hundred thousand more eggs_.

"That's, um, a lot of ants," Mabel said with a slightly disturbed smile.

" _Indeed. Yet, here in the colony, we all know one another,_ " Ant-hony said as he turned toward a line of ants behind him. " _Behind me, we have Ant-onio, Ant-ione, Ant-ero, Ant-on, Ant-wan, Ant...you know what, you get the point. We all have names that start with Ant. Except for Calvin_." Ant-hony then lifted its front leg up and pointed toward another ant behind the three. " _But we don't talk about Calvin_."

" _Aw, c'mon guys_ ," Calvin's sad, yet still monotone voice emerged from the walkie as he stepped forward to some other ants. " _We're family though_."

" _Boo!_ " an ant beside Calvin exclaimed.

" _You ruin this family!_ " another ant exclaimed.

" _The queen should've eaten you years ago!_ " yet another ant exclaimed. " _That's the only form of cannibalism I would've been cool with!_ "

" _Aww_ ," Calvin said he looked down at the ground sadly.

" _Okaaay_  then. Well, this is great and all, but can you explain why you've taken us here?" Dipper asked Ant-hony. "Also, why was I given this robe and ant crown?"

" _You, Dipper, which we assume is your name because that's what those other human friends of yours called you, are the first human to ever make intimate contact with us ants. And so for that, we have crowned you our king_ ," Ant-hony explained.

"Ha!" Dipper laughed spitefully as he turned toward Mabel and Pacifica. "You see? I  _am_ king!"

"Aw man,  _KING_ of the  _ANTS_?!" Pacifica asked sarcastically, making exaggerated jealous actions. "I'm  _sooo_ jealous."

"Yeah, yeah," Dipper said, rolling his eyes as he detected her sarcasm. He turned back toward Ant-hony. "So wait, what does a king do if you've only ever had a queen?"

" _Good question_ ," Ant-hony nodded. " _Your job as king is to sign the peace treaty_."

"Wait, uh, peace treaty? What peace treaty?" Dipper asked curiously.

" _Well, you see, since the dawn of time, for us ants that is, we have been trying to establish a friendly relationship with humans. We were always fascinated by them and so we wanted them to understand us and we wanted to understand them. However, we could never communicate because we are so small and they are so big. And because they're so big, we're not the easiest to see. That means that we're often stepped on and killed by them, but we know that it's unintentional. And so for millions of years, we've been trying to figure out a way to establish communication with humans, but nothing has worked_ ," Ant-hony continued to explain. " _And because of our failures and your kind constantly continuing to step on us, our species became divided and no longer wished to help us on our making peaceful endeavors with humans, splitting off and later evolving into other types of more aggressive ants, such as fire ants, pharaoh ants, and bullet ants_."

"So how exactly are you guys able to communicate through the walkie-talkie now as opposed to when we're our natural sizes?" Dipper asked, holding the walkie up.

" _Our antennae can be used to send thoughts through telepathic signals, but they're not strong enough to send messages to signals that are beyond our telepathic capabilities_ ," Ant-hony explained. " _Because of the smaller size of your device, its signal is smaller, which makes it easier for us to receive and send signals to. Whereas a normally sized signal is usually too strong to make any sort of communication_."

Dipper, Mabel, and Pacifica just stared up at Ant-hony in a mix of awe, shock, and just pure bewilderment of all the information he was giving them. To think that completely normal garden ants were actually looking to form a cross-species peace treaty with the human race for millions of years was absolutely mind-boggling to each of them. What they've been disregarding for several years as some pesky ants were actually a species with a whole separate level of intelligence they couldn't have ever expected from.

" _Anyways, King Dipper, we'd be honored if you could sign this peace treaty, which will finally promise a sealed alliance between humans and ants_ ," Ant-hony explained as a pair of ants brought over a small stone plaque toward Dipper, which he took in his hands. The plaque read 'Human/Ant Peace Treaty' at the top and had a bunch of unreadable scribbles of wet dirt in the middle. At the bottom, there was a line for him to sign. Another ant gave him a thin, pointy stone with a wet dirt tip to mimic a pen. " _A promise that your kind will no longer step on us so we could potentially get to work in trying to reunite our disbanded ant brothers and become a single species of ants again, putting an end to our potentially toxic nature toward your kind._ "

As he held the treaty in his hands, Dipper looked over at Mabel and Pacifica, who still looked like they had no idea what was happening due to the absolute absurdity of the situation and all the information they had been given. Dipper then looked back at the Ant-hony, who just looked on at him patiently along with the other ants, all waiting for him to sign the treaty. Dipper himself was still floored by what was actually happening and contemplated the idea of everything being some really messed up dream of sorts.

 _How the hell did I wind up here after messing around in a diner at midnight?_  he thought to himself.

After a moment of processing everything, he realized that Ant-hony's expectations for the treaty's effects were too high. There was no way that every human on the planet was going to suddenly stop stepping on ants because an irresponsible teenager signed a stone treaty with a dirt pen made of stone. It wasn't going to happen. However, he felt guilty knowing that ants actually did have good intentions and that they shouldn't be taken for granted. Nonetheless, despite this remarkable discovery, there was no way they'd be able to convince the planet that ants can communicate with humans if you shrunk down using size-altering crystals without causing some sort of big human-ant issue, well aware of the world's strong political nature. He didn't want to lie to Ant-hony and his colony only to appear as if they betrayed them as soon as they went on their way. He needed to be direct with them.

He sighed and put the treaty down on the ground. "Look guys, as amazing and slightly scarring as all this is, I can't sign this treaty."

This statement caused a bunch of gasps to then emerge all at once from Mabel's walkie.

" _Why not?_ " Ant-hony asked. " _We crowned you king!_ "

"It's just not that simple to get the human race to not step on you anymore," Dipper explained. "We're just three teens who hardly even know what we're even doing here. Even if I signed this treaty, the rest of the world isn't gonna suddenly change. And the idea of you guys being able to talk to us is already crazy enough. There's no way we can convince the rest of the world without causing some major trouble. You want me to promise that you guys will be safe from us with this treaty, but the truth is - I can't promise that. The human race is diverse and full of billions of people with different minds and ideas. While we might want to help, someone with more power than us might not want to. It just far too complicated for us to handle. And that sucks, because I, of all people, actually have some interest in learning more about you guys."

After he finished explaining his reasoning to the ants, a bunch of different murmurs started to come from the walkie. Dipper couldn't make out a single thing that any of the ants were saying, but he had hoped that they were good things. That wasn't too easy to assume considering they hadn't even known them for too long, though.

" _You're right_ ," Ant-hony said, sounding somewhat disappointed through his monotone voice. " _We understand. It probably is too far-fetched to believe that a stone plaque would solve all our problems. But nonetheless, we're happy to have finally met humans in a way that isn't the bottom of a shoe. Even better, to have one as our king_."

"Well, I mean, sure," Dipper agreed. "It was definitely good to meet you guys and all, but, I, uh, I don't think I can be your king either," he said as he took off the ant crown from his head and threw it on the ground, taking off the robe as well. He then took out his normal hat from his hoodie and placed it back on his head.

" _W-what?_ " Ant-hony questioned. " _You're leaving us?_ "

"I mean, I have to. I'm still a human. Not an ant," Dipper told him. "I mean, as honored as I am to have been crowned the first ever ant king, I never really planned on staying here. I have to go back home, go back to my normal height and do human-things again. The three of us do- me, my sister, and our friend."

"Acquaintance," Pacifica corrected.

"What?" Dipper questioned, thrown off by her sudden intrusion.

"It's a long story," Mabel added to the intrusion.

"Anyways," Dipper said, dismissing Mabel and Pacifica's conversational additions. "We hope you don't mind us going on our way."

"And you guys seem to know your way around here better than we do, so any chance you might be able to take us back to where those giant keys were?" Mabel asked hopefully.

Rather than answering the question, Ant-hony stomped forward menacingly. " _So you just came here, rejected our treaty and now reject the role of our king? A role our kind have been holding onto for a human for millions of years? And now you're going to return to your world and continue to crush and kill us as you have always been doing?_ "

"Uh, oh," Dipper said quietly, having a bad feeling about what was going to happen.

"That...does not answer my question," Mabel claimed, but the negative tone in Ant-hony's voice was enough to prompt her to back up slightly.

"Ant-hony, it won't be like that!" Dipper tried to coax. "Now that we know how you ants think, the three of us will be more respectful of your species. That we can promise! The entire world, though? That we can't!"

" _Forget it, Dipper! You've rejected our peace offering and the honorary role we've given you!_ " Ant-hony exclaimed. " _For this, we will not allow you or your friends to leave!_ "

The ants then began to slowly move toward the three in a surrounding circle. Dipper, Mabel, and Pacifica backed up toward one another as they watched the ants start to close in on them.

"Great, they hate us now," Pacifica claimed as she looked around. "Now we're actually going to get eaten this time."

"I don't think so," Dipper confidently claimed as he turned toward Mabel. "Mabel, get your size-altering flashlight out and give us a bit of an edge here. We need to remind these guys who're the  _real_  big ones are."

"Already on it!" Mabel said as she already dug the flashlight out of her bag. However, a smaller ant suddenly lunged at her. This prompted her to reflexively use the light as a melee weapon, bashing the ant in the face with it, which seemed to surprisingly harm it, sending it back a bit. However, as a result of the strength of the hit, the crystal broke in half before falling off the top of the flashlight and onto the ground. "Uh, oh."

"Mabel!" Pacifica exclaimed in panic as he saw her break the crystal.

"It's fine! Dipper, just hand me your size-flashlight instead!" Mabel tried to reassure the two as she picked up the broken crystal pieces and stuffed them into her sweater pocket.

"I don't have it! I lost that too when I was running from them!" Dipper told her.

"Oh," Mabel casually said as she realized this. "Well, this isn't looking too good for us then."

"You think?" Dipper and Pacifica said frustratedly at the same time.

As the ants got closer, some of them prepared to lunge at the three and began making sinister-sounding noises at them. Pacifica fearfully hid behind Dipper while Mabel stood back and looked around at the incoming ants. She then looked up in the direction that she and Pacifica were taken from earlier and noticed a series of different tunnels, with one of them appearing to be empty. She took this as a potential escape opportunity.

"Welp, time for Plan B!" Mabel claimed as she took her grappling hook back out. She aimed it at the empty tunnel above all the ants and fired. She quickly grabbed ahold of Dipper's arm in preparation, looking back at him and Pacifica. "You two better hold on!"

The hook made impact with the empty tunnel and stuck, and Mabel began to zip toward it. As Dipper was dragged along, he held his other hand out for Pacifica's, who grabbed ahold of it just in time before zipping along with the two. The three then went zooming across the colony and over Ant-hony and the other ants grouped with him. Ant-hony turned around toward the other ants and made a noise, prompting them to begin moving in the direction the three had gone in.

Mabel, Dipper, and Pacifica eventually made contact with the empty tunnel and were flung inside. Mabel recovered the hook back and secured the tool before looking back at Dipper and Pacifica. "C'mon guys! This way!" she shouted, gesturing further into the tunnel.

"Why? What's over here?" Dipper asked as he caught up to her.

"The ants took me and Pacifica from this direction. We found the keys this way!" Mabel told him.

"And this is the tunnel you guys went through?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Probably not," Mabel admitted. "But it's our best shot anyway, so let's get going before the ants catch up!"

Mabel and Dipper began running through the tunnel, while Pacifica stood back a few feet behind. She sighed annoyedly, still completely struck by the fact they were now running from giant, talking ants after losing keys to the diner. She's been through Weirdmageddon, but she felt this entire evening was dangerously close to topping that experience in terms of absolute weirdness.

* * *

The three had been running through the ant tunnels for some time without encountering very many ants. There had been a few that had jumped in their way, but they had easily avoided them with the help of Mabel's grappling hook and her pulling them all to safety. However, the ants had the advantage of knowing how to navigate the entire place, whereas they could've been running in circles this whole time and haven't even noticed.

However, Mabel had continuously said that she had a good feeling about where they were heading along the way. Dipper and Pacifica had extreme doubts, however, and Pacifica had come from the same tunnel as her when they met up with Dipper again.

Despite their doubts, Mabel truly was positive about where she was leading them. She finally came around a corner that she appeared to recognize when she approached it. As they turned it, they entered a four tunnel crossroad room. In the center, the diner keys lied.

"The keys!" Mabel cheered as she spotted them. "See? I told you guys I knew where we were going!"

"Great! Now what do we do? The crystal's broken!" Pacifica pointed out. "How are you going to shrink it down?"

"It's only broken in half," Mabel reminded her as she took out the two pieces of the crystal from her pocket. "I'll just press the two together and hold it up to the light."

"Yeah, you might wanna hurry up with that," Dipper told her.

"No worries! We have time!" Mabel assured him as she pressed the two broken halves of the crystal together.

"Are you sure about that?" Pacifica then asked as she turned around toward the tunnel.

Mabel turned toward the tunnels and noticed that ants were beginning to crawl out from each one, surrounding them yet again. "Aw, c'mon! Stupid, speedy ants!"

An ant then lunged at Dipper, but he jumped back to avoid it and fell on his back. He picked himself back up as he glanced toward Mabel. "MABEL?! ANY TIME NOW!"

Mabel flicked the flashlight on, the light going through the crystal, but giving off a blue hue rather than a pink one. The pink light shined on the keys, beginning to grow it even larger instead of shrinking it. The keys grew large enough to hit the ceiling, which breaking a small hole through the diner's floorboards due to the violent expansion.

"Oops!" Mabel said as she shut the light off, realizing that's not what she wanted.

"MABEL!" Dipper and Pacifica exclaimed in panic as the ants continued to get closer.

"I'm trying!" Mabel said as she continually tried rotating the crystal pieces and flicking the light switch, but she only got a blue light. "I'm turning the pieces but it won't turn pink! It just stays blue!"

Another ant stomped forward right behind her, causing her to drop to flinch forward in fear. She then began to back up to the enlarged keys along with Dipper and Pacifica.

" _TRAITOR!_ " Ant-hony's voice emerged from the walkie-talkie, along with a lot of various angry voices from the other ants shouting at them.

"Hey! We're not traitors! We were just being honest with you guys!" Dipper argued.

"We?" Pacifica questioned, raising an eyebrow at him. "They're looking at you,  _King Dipper_. Not us." Another ant then lunged forward at Pacifica, prompting her jump back away from it. "OKAY! THEY'RE LOOKING AT US TOO!"

Mabel and Dipper both helped Pacifica up and pulled her back to the center, as far back as they could get away from ants. That wasn't very far though, and the ants were still very much right in front of them. They were running out of breathing room, as well as time to breathe.

"What do we do?" Mabel asked in panic. "How do we fight back a bunch of giant, sugar-loving ants?"

"Sugar-loving…" Pacifica repeated to herself. Her eyes then bulged as she suddenly had an idea. She glanced over at Mabel and her eyes darted toward her backpack. "That's it!" Without warning, she then grabbed and aggressively tore Mabel's backpack off of her.

"HEY! PACIFICA?!" Mabel cried out in response to her sudden actions.

"Trust me!" Pacifica told her as she unzipped the main zipper of the bag before proceeding to toss it toward the ants.

The bag then landed right in front of Ant-hony, and a bunch of the sugary snacks that Mabel had taken from the diner, such as cookies, donuts, cake, and melted ice cream, poured out of the main pocket that Pacifica had opened up. Ant-hony looked down at the snacks, sticking his antennae around it to smell it. Suddenly, all the ants seemed to be sticking their antennae in the air, trying to smell it too.

A gasp suddenly came from the walkie. " _FOOOOOOOD!_ " Ant-hony's voice exclaimed.

With this announcement, all of the ants including Ant-hony proceeded to pour themselves all over one another to get their fair share of the very minimal contents of sugary sweets that poured out Mabel's bag. Some ants actually began fighting one another to push them away from the bag. It quickly became a frenzy of ants that were just trying to get to Mabel's bag.

The three just watched silently at the ants as they attacked one another for the backpack. They then glanced at one another, wondering what to do next.

"So, uh, is that it?" Dipper asked.

"I'm guessing we just wait for them to kill each other now," Mabel assumed.

"That'll take too long," Pacifica claimed as she stepped forward. She stuck her finger and thumb up to her mouth and blew, sending out a loud whistle for the ants to hear. "HEY UGLIES!" The ants all turned their heads toward her, suddenly stopping their fighting to give her their attention. "You all like food, don't you?"

" _Just a little bit, sure_ ," Ant-hony nodded, with a bunch of other ants agreeing.

"Well, I work at a diner right above," Pacifica said, pointing up at the diner's floorboards. "If you like food so much, then I can get you even more."

All of the ants then started murmuring with one another, appearing to be interested in the offer. After some brief discussions, Ant-hony stepped forward with less hostility than he displayed before.

" _More food, huh?_ " Ant-hony questioned, intrigued.

"All the food you can dream of," Pacifica nodded with a smirk. "The only price- you let me and my friends go and get away from your filthy ant farm."

Ant-hony thought for a moment before backing away from the three toward the other ants. They appeared to have another brief meeting to discuss the potential deal. None of the three could translate what they were saying, however. Soon enough, the meeting broke and Ant-hony walked back toward the three.

" _You have yourself a deal_ ," Ant-hony nodded, sticking his front leg forward as if he was trying to shake hands with Pacifica.

Pacifica walked up to his giant raised leg, not entirely sure how she was supposed to shake hands with an ant, but also not too pleased with having to either. She glanced back and forth between the twins and Ant-hony in confusion for a moment before simply placing her two hands on the tip of his leg, instantly pulling them back in disgust. That seemed to work just fine for Ant-hony, however, as he lowered his leg down acceptingly.

" _So, uh, when are we going to get our food?_ " Ant-hony asked curiously.

"Well, we have to get back to the surface first," Dipper claimed as she stepped up beside Pacifica in front of Ant-hony. "That might require the height-flashlight, though."

"No worries! Now that we're not running for our lives anymore, I can figure out how to fix these two pieces of the height crystal!" Mabel claimed as she walked up beside the two, taking the two crystal pieces out of her pocket. "It'll just take me a few minutes."

However, the moment she said this, the two halves of the crystal suddenly crumbled to dust completely within her hands. Dipper and Pacifica stared at the destroyed crystal in complete horror before glancing back at Mabel herself, who kept a smile despite knowing exactly what just happened.

"Better make that a few hours," she said in a positive tone, as her eye began twitching.

* * *

Despite the crumbled crystal, the twins and Pacifica continued to get to work on fulfilling their promise to the ants. While Mabel stayed behind beside the giant keys with the ants to fix the crystal, Dipper and Pacifica were given her grappling hook to transport themselves back and forth between the burrow and the surface. They would then bring themselves back to the kitchen and grab food they could reach and carry before taking them back to the floor. Using their strength as shrunken down teens, they had carried tiny individual pieces of various food items to bring back to the hole. They would then build a pile of tiny food pieces back in the diner keys room, building onto the pile as time progressed and they waited for Mabel to fix the crystal.

After approximately four hours later into the night, Dipper and Pacifica returned from above once more, zipping down the rope of Mabel's grappling hook as they came back with pieces of food to place in the pile. Tired and out of breath from constantly running back and forth between underground and above ground, the two collapsed against a dirt wall.

Dipper wiped balms of sweat dripping down his forehead as he turned to Mabel. "How's it going with the crystal, Mabel?" he asked through his heavy breathing.

Over the past few hours, Mabel had managed to basically 'glue' the crumbled pieces of the crystal dust back together using a brown sap she had found. As Dipper asked how it was coming along, she stuck another tiny bit of dust to the nearly rebuilt crystal. She examined it closely afterward. "I  _think_...I'm finished!"

"Oh, thank God," Pacifica said as she threw herself on the dirt ground. "I'm so tired that I couldn't care less that I'm laying in muck right now. Do you  _KNOW_ how far you have to push me for me to not care about that?"

"Maybe  _this_ will make you feel better," Mabel claimed as she aimed the flashlight with the reattached crystal at the giant diner keys in the center of the room.

She flipped the flashlight on and a pink light emitted through the crystal. The light made impact with the keys and began to shrink it down. She held the light on the keys until they reached a normal size relative to their shrunken height. Once she finished, she turned off the light and walked over to the keys. She then picked them off the ground and tossed them over to Pacifica.

Pacifica caught the keys in her hands and laid them out in her palm. She smiled as she looked up Mabel. "Well, it doesn't make me any less tired, but it does give me relief."

"You're welcome," Mabel told her with a smug smile.

Pacifica's smile then faded away with this reply. "Don't forget that you're still the one who got us into this mess in the first place."

"And don't  _you_ forget that it was an  _accident_ ," Mabel reminded her.

" _Very well. You've solved your key problem. Now what about us?_ " Ant-hony's voice reemerged from the walkie, intervening. The three turned around to see that Ant-hony and all of the other ants right behind them.

" _Is this seriously all the food we get?!_ " another ant asked, sounding dissatisfied.

" _You promised us all the food we could dream of. And I don't believe this quite lives up to the amount of food that I typically dream of_ ," Ant-hony claimed, also sounding dissatisfied as he looked on at the pile.

"Yeesh! Do you ants ever get cold? Because right now, you need to  _CHILL_ ," Mabel told him.

Mabel then rotated the crystal a bit more before pointing the flashlight directly at the stack of food. She flipped the switch and a blue light shined out, making impact with the pile of small food pieces. It instantly began to grow the pile, growing it all the way to the top of the room. The ants had backed up as the pile grew even bigger than them until Mabel shut the switch off. What was once a pile of tiny food pieces was now a pile of large food pieces that were even bigger than the ants themselves.

Dipper looked over at Mabel's flashlight and smiled. "Wow, you managed to put that crystal back together pretty well. What did you use?"

"Some stuff I found in the corner," Mabel said as she wiped her hands on her already dirtied sweater.

"Some stuff?" Pacifica questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"Let's just say I'm tossing this crystal and we're getting a new one when we grow back," Mabel said with a slight look of revulsion, seeing the implication clear to both Dipper and Pacifica, who exchanged looks of disgust. "And you two complained about being  _tired_ …"

"Well, anyways…" Dipper said, moving on from the topic. "Now that the snack pieces are big, I guess that means the ants can…"

" _FOOD!_ " shouted the voices of a few hundred ants, including Ant-hony.

Without hesitation, the ants immediately began swarming the food pile, crawling all over the pieces as they began shredding through them. Dipper, Mabel, and Pacifica just watched as the pile began to gradually decrease in size.

"So, uh, I guess they're cool then?" Dipper asked, looking over at Mabel and Pacifica for any confirming looks. However, the two just shrugged, not any more sure than he was. Dipper looked back at the ants crawling over the food and walked over to them. With all of the ants, it was hard to specifically pick out Ant-hony from the others, but he needed confirmation that they were on good terms, not wanting to risk unintentionally making a new enemy. "HEY, ANT-HONY!"

At that moment, a single ant's head poked out from behind the stack of food and glanced right over at Dipper. " _What is it?!_ " Ant-hony asked impatiently, mouth stuffed with food.

"Are we cool now? Because now that we filled our end of the deal, we're gonna get going," Dipper told him.

" _Yes, yes! We're 'cool'_ ," Ant-hony instantly dismissed. " _Thank you for your delivery. Farewell. May we never cross paths again. Yada, yadda. I'm gonna keep eating_."

As he said, Ant-hony immediately went back to eating the food pieces along with the rest of the ants, the pile now less than half of what it used to be.

Dipper seemed to make note of this as he turned back to the girls. "So...they realize they're already about to finish all of the food, right?"

"Welp, that'll be their problem now," Mabel shrugged before bending over and picking up the grappling hook from the ground. She immediately aimed it upwards at the floorboards above and fired the grapple, latching onto the wood above. She grabbed onto Dipper's arm while he grabbed onto Pacifica's before the three slowly ascended back up to the surface; the ants not paying attention to them as they left.

A minute passed, and the ants had finished the remains of the food pile. Overall, they appeared satisfied with their meals as they began to settle down, most of them feeling full.

" _Ah, that really hit the spot. Really good stuff_ ," Ant-hony said as he began to relax. However, this relaxation merely lasted two seconds. " _So good that I'm already starting to feel ready for seconds!_ "

A bunch of ants appeared to feel the same way, as many stood up and looked around at that moment. However, they all quickly noticed that there wasn't any bit of food left from the pile. Ant-hony looked closely at his surroundings and the ground, but couldn't find a single spec of food left to eat.

" _Um, I think we may have already run out of food_ ," an ant suggested.

" _DRAT!_ " Ant-hony exclaimed disappointedly. " _Out of food already? This is an outrage!_ "

" _I blame Calvin!_ " an ant exclaimed, gesturing toward Calvin, who stood alone in the center of the room.

" _It's always Calvin!_ " another ant agreed.

" _Agreed. Everyone blame Calvin!_ " Ant-hony nodded

At that moment, all of the ants surrounded Calvin and began booing him, showering him with remarks blaming him for the food running out so fast. Calvin just stood in the center, looking around at the all the ants that were shaming him.

" _Aw, c'mon guys. I didn't even get a bite of the food_ ," Calvin tried to tell those shaming him.

" _THAT'S WHY IT'S YOUR FAULT!_ " an ant stood out from the sea of other ants unjustly shaming Calvin.

" _Aww_ ," Calvin moped as he hung his head low.

* * *

Back on the surface, Mabel had her ear pressed against the walkie-talkie, still able to listen in on the ants talking to one another as she walked beside Dipper and Pacifica. She promptly turned off the walkie, somewhat disturbed.

"So the ants seem to be taking the food problem pretty well," Mabel informed the two.

"How so?" Dipper asked.

"Well, it sounded like they're blaming one another for it," Mabel replied.

"Good for them," Pacifica said. "Now they can tear each other apart instead of us."

"That's one way to look at it, I guess," Dipper said as he stopped in place and looked up. They were now stood directly in front of the bottom of the metallic surface fridge. "Anyways, here we are. Back to normal heights we come."

"Good," Pacifica claimed. "We still have a cockroach problem here, and I swear...if I have to come face to face with one more giant insect…"

"Aw, but cockroaches are so cute!" Mabel said as she got the height-altering flashlight back out. "To me, they're much more adorable than ants ever were."

"You're dead to me," Pacifica said disapprovingly.

"C'mon, Mabel. Let's just grow back and put an end to this...whatever the hell this whole experience was," Dipper said, already beginning to blank out on the entire adventure and its total absurdity.

"Three growth spurts coming right up!" Mabel exclaimed as she pointed the flashlight toward the fridge's reflective surface.

She flipped the switch and a blue light shined out, bouncing right off the reflective fridge back to the three. Within seconds, they began growing; their point of views ascending as they became taller again. Mabel eventually flipped the switch off, and the three found themselves back to their approximately normal heights. They patted their bodies and the items they carried on them, ensuring everything was in their correct places and back to their own sizes.

"Is everything the size it needs to be?" Dipper asked the two, seeing how they were checking for themselves.

"I think so," Mabel said as she finished checking herself.

Pacifica pulled out the diner keys again, seeing how they appeared perfectly normal in her grasp again. She clutched them tightly in her hands and smiled. "Yep. Everything's just how it needs to be."

"Except the diner," Mabel pointed out, addressing the fact that the place still wasn't cleaned up after all the messes they had made prior to the ant adventure.

"Oh crap!" Pacifica exclaimed as she looked around at the messes. "We still need to clean this place up!"

"Yeah, it's beginning to smell like scrambled eggs in here!" Mabel said as she analyzed the smell of the air.

Pacifica took in a good whiff of the air herself, verifying Mabel's words about the smell. "Wait, why would it smell like scrambled…" Her eyes bulged as she suddenly remembered something. At that moment, she slowly turned around and looked behind her, the twins turning as well.

It turned out that all that time since the moment they grew back to their normal heights, none of them had noticed the diner's chef, Franklin, standing and cooking scrambled eggs at the stove. His eyes were fixed upon the three, and his face showed an odd mixture of shock and trauma as he stared at them without saying a word.

Pacifica was mentally punching herself for forgetting that she had paid Franklin the night prior, ordering him not to come back until the next morning. Seeing the look on his face, she assumed that he must've seen them suddenly grow back from being tiny, considering how much of a scare that must've been for an older man like him.

As the three made awkward eye contact with Franklin for a good moment, Pacifica figured she had to break the silence and try to explain things to him. "Hey, Frank-"

" _AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!_ " Franklin suddenly screamed out of fear; the unexpected scream causing the three to flinch. He continued screaming for a moment before fainting, dropping his spatula and falling unconscious on the floor.

Dipper, Mabel, and Pacifica nervously stared at Franklin as he laid unconsciously. Pacifica had no idea what she was going to explain to him upon his awakening, or if he might possibly rat her out to Lazy Susan. She began thinking of numbers in her head, as it was likely going to take a large amount of money to convince him to forget about this incident.

"Hold on," Mabel intervened, suddenly realizing something herself. "I thought you had this place locked up? How was he able to-?"

At that moment, the back door of the kitchen suddenly opened up. "Hey, Pacifica, is there something wrong with the front door?" Lazy Susan's voice sounded as she walked inside. "I tried coming through the front door, but it was locked, and had to come here through the - HUH?!"

Lazy Susan stopped herself as soon as she laid her eye on everything she saw in the room. To confirm her sightings more easily, she pulled her dysfunctional eyelid up so she could see the room with both eyes. Right away, she was able to see the floor, walls, and ceiling covered in various dried up spills and goops. The next thing she noticed was Franklin lying on the floor unconscious. Lastly, her eyes landed on Pacifica and the Pines twins standing to the left and right of her, all of them staring right back at her with guilty looks.

Pacifica knew what was coming the more she looked on at Lazy Susan. Despite how dimwitted she may have been, she knew this wasn't something she was going to get out of. Even with the Pines help.

"Both of you- beat it," Pacifica ordered the twins quietly without looking at them. The twins both exchanged hesitant looks with one another, not quite wanting to leave their friend alone. But Pacifica knew this didn't concern them nearly as much as it concerned her. " _Now_."

As she ordered, Dipper grabbed Mabel's wrist and pulled her along, rushing right past Lazy Susan and out of the diner. Lazy Susan watched the two run off but made no effort to stop them. Instead, she directed her focus back to Pacifica. Rather than angrily going off on Pacifica, she just sighed, giving off a strong look of disappointment rather than anger.

Pacifica readied herself for a rough conversation. But no matter how she planned on explaining herself, she knew what the end result was going to be.

* * *

Across the street from Greasy's, Dipper and Mabel stood and waited near the edge of the forest. Dipper stared at the restaurant intently, while Mabel paced around beside him anxiously.

"C'mon, Lazy Susan's reasonable, right?" Mabel asked Dipper. "She'd totally give her another chance, wouldn't she?"

"I don't know," Dipper answered. "The circumstances seem pretty bad. She lied about doing an actual midnight shift and instead, let in two teens after hours, messed around, stole and ate a bunch of food, created a big mess everywhere, and potentially traumatized a man for life. This doesn't bode well for her."

"UGH!" Mabel exclaimed, lightly hitting her head against a tree out of guilt. "This is all our fault! This was the last piece of a normal life that she had left and we ruined it for her! We should never have gotten involved."

"Now she's going to have to go back to working for her scummy parents," Dipper said, folding his arms guiltily as he thought about it. "Man, we really did blow this one."

Mabel's eyes darted back toward the diner, eyes bulging. "SHE'S COMING OUT!"

Dipper looked up at the diner and looked at the front door. Through the glass in the door, he saw Pacifica putting a trench coat over her waitress dress as she exited out with a sad look on her face. Lazy Susan had stood back behind her, watching her walk off with a look of disappointment. She then walked back inside and held a white board of some sort. She wrote some words on it before putting it up at the window, displaying 'HELP WANTED'.

Dipper and Mabel exchanged guilty looks with one another before walking across the street to meet up with Pacifica. Dipper stood cautiously behind her while Mabel rushed up beside her, putting on a fake confident attitude despite knowing the result. Her hope was to somehow rub off a bit of her optimism on her despite her negative feelings at the moment.

"Hey!" Mabel greeted as she walked along with her. " _Soooo_ , how'd it go?"

"Please," Pacifica rolled her eyes as she kept walking. "Like you guys don't already know."

"Well, what if we don't know?" Mabel asked kindly, still trying to maintain a positive vibe.

"You do," Pacifica dismissed, not wishing to start with her games.

"How do you know that?" Mabel asked. "Unless Northwests also take psychic classes, I would've never taken you for someone who-"

"I GOT FIRED, OKAY?!" Pacifica burst out at her as she stopped walking.

Mabel instantly began to regret her attempt at trying to spread positivity, as her outburst was the very thing she was hoping to prevent. At this point, there really was no other way to respond without giving into the truth.

"We're sorry, Pacifica," Mabel sighed, folding her hands guiltily. "This whole thing wouldn't have happened if we had just stayed out of the way like you had asked. This is all our fault."

Pacifica sighed as she cooled off some of her initial anger. "No, it isn't. It's my fault. This isn't the first time I've done these fake graveyard shifts, so I've been risking my job with these for awhile anyway. It's just that this time, I got a little comfortable and tested my luck a bit more than I should've. If it hadn't been for the whole ant adventure, could we have gotten away with cleaning up everything like nothing happened? Maybe. But, that might've just encouraged me to keep doing this kind of thing again and again until I eventually get caught anyway. So, maybe getting fired was...inevitable. And maybe it's just for the best."

"But I thought this job was the one part of a normal life that you had left?" Mabel asked. "Now you have to work for your parents."

"That was probably inevitable too," Pacifica admitted. "I mean, my dad has been tired of me keeping this job and if I never got fired or quit, he probably would've just pulled me back anyway. Sure, it was my last bit of being normal, but I just gotta suck it up and deal with a full-time rich girl life again."

"I guess," Mabel said as she rubbed her shoulder guiltily. "I just feel bad that we cost you your job. Even though you say it's your fault, we came along and pressured you to do the things we did."

"Sure, but on the bright side, it was also some of the most fun I've had, like, ever," Pacifica claimed with a slight smile.

"Really?" Mabel asked.

"Yeah, I mean, the whole ant thing aside, I kind of really enjoyed messing around and doing whatever," Pacifica admitted. "It may have been one of the big reasons I ended up getting fired, but what can I say? I had fun. Never would I think I'd meet people willing to just hang out late at night at a diner with me just to goof around, but here you two are. So, I'm glad I have friends like you two."

Dipper and Mabel both smiled at these words. "Aww, Pacifica!" Mabel exclaimed happily as she suddenly wrapped her arms around Pacifica, hugging her tightly. "We're glad to have a friend like you too."

Pacifica stood in shock by Mabel's hug, not too appreciative of it. She pushed her back dismissively. " _Yeeeah_ , we're not exactly at the hugging phase."

"That's cool. At least you finally admitted that we ARE friends! HA!" Mabel exclaimed with a wide grin. "I knew it! You're so fake! Not wanting to admit we're friends when that's what you thought this whole time! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!" She then took her phone out of her sweater pocket and held it in her face, displaying an audio recorder that was currently in progress of recording. "And I even recorded it! So there's no use denying it either!"

Pacifica just stood there, somewhat agitated that she let her cover blow while she was in her emotions. Rather than attempting to deny her own words, she just let Mabel have her moment. She's clearly kept her game up all day and didn't want to try to take away from it, no matter how much it annoyed her. But while she was fine with her winning this battle, she didn't want this to be the end of the war.

As Mabel celebrated, now beginning to run around all over the place victoriously, Pacifica turned toward Dipper. "How much do I have to pay you to delete that recording from her phone while she's sleeping or something?"

"Why? Then I have to deal with her instead," Dipper asked, chuckling slightly.

"I think you deserve it after everything that you two have cost me today," Pacifica said with a smirk.

"Ah, what happened to it being all your fault?" Dipper asked, seeing how she's jokingly trying to shift the blame.

"Fine, I accept ninety percent of the blame," Pacifica admitted. "You make up for your ten percent by deleting that recording."

"So no pay then?" he replied, raising an eyebrow. "It's just something I owe you now?"

"I'll consider the pay."

"Then I'll consider deleting the recording."

Pacifica scoffed, admiring Dipper's stubbornness. However, she noticed a black limousine slowly driving up right behind him. The twins then turned to look at it as well once it parked by the curb beside them.

The window rolled down and an elderly driver's face popped out, glancing over at Pacifica. "Ms. Northwest," he greeted. "Ready to go home?"

"Hi, Ernesto," Pacifica greeted. "And yes. I am."

She then walked over to the back of the limousine, as Ernesto then turned toward the twins. He then looked back at Pacifica. "Friends of yours?"

Pacifica opened the door to the back as she looked over at him and the twins. "Something like that."

"Hmm," Ernesto nodded as she entered the back and shut the door behind her. "By the way, your father wanted me to let you ahead of time that Bernardo is called in sick earlier, and so he won't be serving for you today. Your father says you're still responsible for cleaning up Mason's stable later."

Pacifica took a second to process this thought. As if she hadn't taken enough mental punches already. Now she's learning that staying overnight in the first place was entirely pointless, as she didn't even get to avoid the very thing that she was trying to avoid in the first place by spending the night at the diner.

" _Lovely_ ," Pacifica simply responded to him, trying not to let her bitterness get the best of her while she's in front of one of her family's workers.

Remembering the name of her pony again, Mabel once again started trying to fight back another urge to burst out laughing. However, she couldn't contain herself and fell back on the ground, kicking her legs back and forth as she clenched her stomach, laughing hard. "She has to clean after  _Mason!_ "

Dipper stood frozen as he listened to her in annoyance, his face began reddening again. Pacifica, on the other hand, just stared at her through the car window, still not understanding Mabel's obnoxious behavior over the name. She looked up at Dipper.

"Why is that name so amusing to her?" she asked.

"Gee, uh, I'm not sure," Dipper said as he awkwardly rubbed the back of his head. "A mystery for another day, I guess?"

"Your sister is a mystery," Pacifica told him as she began raising her window again. "And I'm not sure she's one you can solve."

Dipper chuckled at the joke, waving as her limo began driving off. Mabel suddenly kicked herself off the ground once she realized Pacifica was leaving. She started waving as well.

"Bye, Pacifica!" Mabel exclaimed as she waved. "Say hello to Mason for me!"

Dipper flinched at the sudden use of his name once again. He got into an aggressive stance, clenching his fists as he got in her face. "I swear, Mabel. If she EVER finds out about this…"

"Don't worry, Mason!" Mabel said, placing her hand on his shoulder. "Your secret's safe with me."

"STOP SAYING THAT NAME!" Dipper ordered, causing Mabel to flinch back a few steps.

"Okay, okay!" Mabel chuckled, raising her hands up innocently. "I promise I'll never say Mason again."

That did it for Dipper. As soon as he heard her say the name, he went after her. She was ready for him to make that move, however, and immediately began running away. She turned her head slightly back as he chased her. "I'll race you back to the Mystery Shack, Mason!"

"Dammit, Mabel!" he shouted back as he ran after her. He wasn't pleased with the fact that she was using his real name but knew it was mostly in good fun. Nonetheless, he wasn't giving up on his chase, and she wasn't giving up on her get away.

It may have been all in good fun, but with the two of them, there would always be an element of competition when it came to matters like this.

* * *

_June 14th, 2016_

_So ants can talk._

_Well, sort of. It turns out that ants can actually use their antennae to communicate their thoughts with signals, like a really tiny walkie-talkie. They also have a long history of worshipping humans since the beginning of time or something like that. Probably the strangest adventure I've ever been on. Which is ironic considering they're just normal ants rather than something obviously weird like gnomes or something._

_But anyways, let's talk about Pacifica Northwest._

_That's right. Mabel and I met her yesterday at her job at Greasy's Diner. Well...her old job. Yeah...we kind of got her fired after a bunch of diner shenanigans last night._

_But I'm surprised to see how much she's changed since the mean, rich girl she was when we met her four years back. Now, she's a mostly nice, yet, still sarcastic rich girl. It's still a huge step up. She still needs work in some areas, but I'm proud of her. I think if she keeps it up, she'd be another great friend to have around during the summer. And this might be crazy, but I got some familiar vibe when I first saw her again in her diner outfit and her hair in a ponytail, a ~~nd that same smell of flowers that I remember four years ago and why am I writing this~~_

_I just hope Mabel knows to lay off the 'M' jokes next time and never tells her what it means. Otherwise, we'll both be in for a train of embarrassment._

_That'll close today's entry. Now to clean up all this dried up Mabel Smoothie and make up for an entire night's worth of sleep._

_NOTE: NEVER DRINK OR DIRECTLY SMELL MABEL SMOOTHIE_

* * *

 

_GSV YOLMWV XZM HVV NLIV GSILFTS GSV UIZNVH_


	21. Those Old Jersey Shores: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After being stranded in the middle of the ocean for several days, Stan and Ford soon find themselves sailing toward their old childhood home.

The summer afternoons in Gravity Falls have been known to be pretty average on a scale ranging from peaceful to chaotic. Although things would usually lean more toward the chaotic end, as it was Gravity Falls after all. Chaos was to be expected from such a weird town.

However, this afternoon was remarkably more peaceful than usual. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Not a pedestrian to be seen. Not another car on the road. The town felt as empty as can be.

Stan couldn't remember a time where Gravity Falls was this quiet. This felt like a first for him. But he was perfectly okay with it. The quiet made the final drive back to the Mystery Shack with Ford much more appreciative. It was easier to remember the good times and fond memories of the town, rather than remembering the annoyance of rush hour or annoying townspeople. Easier to look out the window and get lost in beautiful nostalgia rather than suffering and regret.

"I must say- it's quite a peaceful day around here, don't you think?" Ford asked Stan from the driver's seat.

Stan looked back from the window to face his brother. "It was until you starting talking."

Ford chuckled. "I'm just saying. The town just seems far more vacant than I remember. I wonder if everyone decided to sleep in or if maybe there was a bunch of recent movers or what?"

"Well, it's Wednesday, so I find sleeping in kind of hard to believe," Stan said. "As idiotic as over half the town might be, most of them still have jobs. Hard to believe, but they do. And with that said, I also doubt that a lot of those jobs pay enough to justify moving out of town."

"Well, then, we'll just call it a perfect summer afternoon," Ford settled. "The universe's way of welcoming us back home after a few good years of adventuring."

"Yeah," Stan nodded somewhat glumly as he already began reminiscing about their adventures.

"What's wrong, Stanley?" Ford asked as he noticed Stan's downcast tone.

"Nothing," Stan shook his head. "I'm glad to be home. I'm just...I'm kinda gonna miss the adventuring, I guess. I've gotten used to that being our thing for so long, so it just feels weird knowing that it's finally over." He contemplated the idea of bringing up the topic of their conversation back at the ice cave. "And, ya know...that we're not gonna do them anymore."

"What? Are you kidding?" Ford chuckled, struck by Stan's words. "Who said that?"

Stan raised an eyebrow in confusion as he turned back to Ford. "What? You did. It was your idea."

"Why would I suggest something like that?" Ford asked. "These past few years have been amazing! I'd love to keep doing this kind of thing in the future!"

"B-but...I thought you said…"

"I don't remember what I said, Stanley," Ford told him. "So just listen to what I'm saying now. I want us to keep going on these trips and adventures in the future. I don't know why I would ever suggest that we stop. I mean, c'mon. What's gonna stop us? Old age?"

"Well, I mean…" Stan said, rubbing the back of his head as he thought about that being a strong possibility.

"Stan, listen," Ford said as he put his hand on his brother's shoulders. "You're my brother. And I want us to keep sailing around the world and going on these big journeys together. From now until the day we die."

Stan was surprised by Ford's sudden mind change on the idea of spending their future continuing to go around the world. But at the same time, he couldn't say he didn't love what he was hearing.

"You really mean that, Stanford?" Stan asked happily.

"Of course I do!" Ford nodded. "Hell, maybe with their parents' permission, we could bring Dipper and Mabel along with us and share the times with them. I'm sure they'd love to come along with us. What do you think of that?"

"Bringing the kids along?" Stan asked. "Oh man, they'd totally love it! I can see it now- 'Pines at Sea'! We'd be almost like pirates, except we'd actually have teeth!"

"Pirates…" Ford restated with a smile, visibly thinking about it. "Reminds me of the times we used to dress up and play as pirates back on Glass Shard Beach when we were kids."

Stan stared at Ford for a brief moment as he processed this thought. He stared forward for a moment as he began to reminisce in the same memory. He smiled, starting to feel slightly emotional.

"I can't believe you still remember that," he said as he pulled his glasses off and wiped the fog from them.

"How could I ever forget?" Ford asked. "Some of my most fondest childhood memories were on that beach."

"Yeah," Stan nodded in agreement as he put his glasses back on. "Mine too." However, his emotional smile suddenly faded as he began to think of Ford's words again. "Hold on...did you just say ' _most fondest_ '?"

"No time, Stanley!" Ford exclaimed excitedly as he suddenly stopped and parked the car. "We're here!"

"Wait, really?!" Stan asked as he looked out the window.

Ford was right. They had just parked right outside the Mystery Shack. Stan was thrown off by how soon they had just gotten there. Perhaps he wasn't paying attention outside enough and was too lost in his memories to notice how close they actually were to home.

"What're you waiting for? Let's see the family again!" Ford exclaimed as he unbuckled his seatbelt and exited the car.

"Hold up, Poindexter!" Stan exclaimed as he quickly followed him outside the car. "I'm not letting you be the first one to say hello to them!"

"We'll see about that!" Ford said daringly. He looked at the front door of the Shack in the distance as he ran over to it. "DIPPER! MABEL! IT'S US! IT'S YOUR GREAT UNCLES!"

"WE'RE HOME!" Stan added as he ran behind Ford.

Within the next few seconds, the front door of the Mystery Shack burst open. Dipper and Mabel stood in the doorway, looking out at the Stan twins running toward them in the distance. They smiled wide and happily as they realized it was really them.

"GRUNKLE STAN!" Mabel exclaimed happily as she ran down the porch to greet them.

"GREAT UNCLE FORD!" Dipper exclaimed as he did the same as his sister, running over toward their two great uncles.

"KIDS!" Stan and Ford shouted at the same time as they kept running toward them.

Dipper and Mabel kept running toward the two excitedly, the distance slowly closing. Mabel spread her arms out as she ran, preparing herself to give the biggest hug she would ever give. As the two pairs of twins were about to meet up in the middle, Mabel leaped up into the air toward Stan with her arms spread out as widely as she could possibly spread. The Stan twins were more than ready to hug the two back.

_FLASH!_

Suddenly, there was a large, bright beam of light that shined directly upon Dipper and Mabel, freezing their entire bodies mid-air as they ran, as well as their facial expressions.

"What the…?" Stan asked, his excitement immediately turning into confusion and fear. He knew there was absolutely no logical reason for Dipper and Mabel to be frozen the way they were. "Ford, what's happening?"

Ford appeared just as confused as he was. "I-I don't know!"

" **HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!** "

A large figure suddenly overshadowed Stan and Ford. The two glanced upward at the figure and where the beam of light emerged from. Both of their eyes bulged as they were suddenly struck with the most fear either of them of had felt for the longest time.

" **WELL, WELL, WELL! AIN'T THIS AN** _ **ADORABLE**_   **PINES FAMILY REUNION?** " taunted the voice of the none other than Bill Cipher. He used his large, glowing, white eye to levitate the frozen teens away from Stan and Ford and over to him.

"NOO!" Ford exclaimed as he reached his hand out toward Dipper and Mabel as they were levitated closer to Bill.

"YOU GIVE THEM BACK, YOU SONUVA-!" Stan exclaimed angrily at Bill.

" **NOW YOU SEE, THAT'S ONLY ONE OF THE THINGS I COULD DO** ," Bill cut off as he held the frozen teens above his hand. " **BUT LET'S TAKE A LOOK AT ALL OF OUR OPTIONS HERE:** **I COULD EITHER GIVE THEM BACK TO YOU...** "

Bill suddenly snapped his fingers right underneath Dipper and Mabel, causing their bodies to implode and vanish. The sight horrified the Stan twins, even prompting Stan to weakly drop to his knees.

"... **OR I COULD COMPLETELY WIPE THEM FROM EXISTENCE! NOW WHICH ONE SHOULD I...oh wait, I ALREADY COMPLETELY WIPED THEM FROM EXISTENCE!**   **HAHAHA!** _ **CLUMSY ME!**_ " he laughed maniacally for a good moment as the Stans continued to stare at him in shock and horror. " **ANYWAYS, NOW THAT I'M BACK, I FEEL LIKE THIS PLACE NEEDS TO BE REDECORATED TO MY LIKING! I MEAN, SERIOUSLY...THIS BLUE SKY? IT JUST AIN'T GONNA WORK!** "

Bill snapped his fingers again, and without any transition, the sky instantly turned red with a large, orange, X-shaped dimensional rift formed in the middle. The winds had also immediately picked up and some dark clouds had formed.

" **THAT'S MUCH BETTER! LOOK AT THAT RED! REALLY SETS THE MOOD, DONTCHA THINK?** "

"DAMN YOU, CIPHER!" Ford shouted angrily as he pointed his finger at him. "YOU CROSSED THE LINE! WHAT YOU DID TO DIPPER AND MABEL WON'T GO IN VAIN! WE STOPPED YOU ONCE! WE'LL STOP YOU AGAI-"

" **YAWN**."

Bill then shot a large bolt of electricity out of his eye at Ford, shocking him and prompting him to give off a loud scream of pure agony.

"STANFORD! NO!" Stan screamed, reaching his hand out for his brother.

Once the bolt finished, all that was left was a stone petrification of Ford. It didn't last long, as the stone immediately withered to dust, blowing away in the growing winds.

" **NO ONE LIKES A CRITIC!** " Bill said as he playfully examined his fingernails. " **IF YOU DIDN'T LIKE MY SKY, YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE SAID ANYTHING! I WOULD'VE JUST SIMPLY WIPED YOU FROM EXISTENCE TOO! BUT NOPE! YOU HAD TO SHARE YOUR OPINION! THEREFORE, I HAD TO HEAR YOU SUFFER FIRST!** "

Stan was already on his knees after losing the kids, but seeing the ashes of his brother blow away in the wind brought out a new feeling of pure rage in him that he couldn't figure out how to express besides sadness.

"You...monster…" Stan said as he began tearing up.

" **OH, YOU THINK I'M A MONSTER** _ **NOW?**_ " Bill asked as he suddenly started levitating Stan with his hand. " **JUST YOU WAIT, STANLEY! I HAVE A BONE TO PICK WITH** _ **YOU!**_ "

Stan attempted to resist as he was levitated toward Bill, but he was helpless. He soon found himself levitating upside down as looked right into Bill's eye. "Alright, you big, triangle freak! You win! You took my niece and nephew! You took my brother! Now you have me hanging right in front of you! A clear target at your disposal! You win! If you're gonna do anything, make it quick!"

" **OH, YOU** _ **WISH**_   **IT WAS THAT SIMPLE!** " Bill told him as he playfully spun Stan around in his hand, making him dizzy. " **BUT THE TRUTH IS, STANLEY, YOU'RE ACTUALLY MUCH MORE HARD-HEADED THAN I HAD ORIGINALLY THOUGHT! SO IT LOOKS LIKE THIS WHOLE PROCESS OF OURS IS GONNA TAKE A BIT LONGER THAN I HAD HOPED!**

"What? Process?" Stan asked as Bill suddenly stopped spinning him. "What are you on about?"

" **YOU'LL SEE SOON ENOUGH!** " Bill warned. " **AIN'T MUCH I CAN DO IN HERE NOW BUT GIVE YA A GOOD SCARE, BUT BEFORE YOU KNOW IT, YOU'LL BE MY PUNCHING BAG! HAHAHAHA!** "

Stan was unsettled by Bill's words, having no clue what they meant or what process he was referring to. However, these thoughts diminished as Bill soon raised a fist at him, which he had then enlarged to be more massive than it already was.

" **I'LL SEE YOU SOON, STANLEY!** " he exclaimed before cackling sinisterly. He then lunged his massive first directly at Stan. Nothing to do other than float helplessly, Stan shut his eyes tightly and braced himself for Bill's fist making direct contact with him.

* * *

"Stanley!"

Stan suddenly jolted up from his sleep in a dazed and fearful mess. He twisted and turned back and forth, shaking and wobbling the surface he laid on.

"STANLEY!"

Stan finally opened his eyes upon the repeat of his name, and the familiarity of Ford's voice. Straight across from him he was, giving him a strong look of concern.

"Stanley, what the hell's wrong with you?" Ford asked. "Are you okay?"

As Stan's eyes continued to adjust from waking up, he looked around at his surroundings. Soon, he was able to identify the obvious view- the ocean. Miles and miles of pure saltwater without the merest piece of land in sight. He looked down at where he was sitting, realizing he was floating in the comfort of their inflatable boat.

The situation was finally refreshing in his head. They were in the Arctic, blew up a mountain, lost the Stan O' War II, and then took off on its emergency inflatable escape boat before engine fell off. While they're still afloat, the only thing moving them now was the ocean current. He realized this had been their condition for days and the feeling of that time washed over him again, as he also realized that he hadn't showered for a while. Being as old and careless as he normally was, the feeling of being a little dirty never bothered him too much. But at that moment, being unclean never felt so unpleasant. He would normally resist a proper shower for a day or two until he gave in, but it was clear to him now that it had been longer than that.

He put a hand on his chin and felt around his face, feeling the roughness of a growing stubble due to his lack of shaving for the past few days. He had accidentally left his razor behind on the Stan O' War rather than packing it back up in his backpack, so it was just an issue he had to endure. Looking straight across at Ford, he noticed he was taking on a similar stubble. His shaving method was far more grand and insane, however, as he used fire grenades that he had designed himself he to blow up and burn off the stubble from his face. A process he claims to prefer due to how much quicker it is compared to a razor, although Stan himself would much rather endure the extra ten minutes than essentially blow up his face. He had brought some for their trip, although being on an inflatable boat for the past few days, he felt it was best to hold off on using them until they got back to land.

As Stan looked around, still dazed and somewhat fearful, he was slowly coming to a realization that the terror he had just experienced came from nothing more than a mere nightmare.

"Yeah, I-I'm fine," Stan stuttered, still a bit shaken up. "Just a...a bad dream is all."

"Another one?" Ford asked, raising a concerned eyebrow.

"What do you mean?" Stan asked.

"Stan, that's the fourth nightmare you've had since we got stuck at sea," Ford reminded him. "And we've been out here for four whole days."

That was another thing that Stan had forgotten about at the moment. He's been having nightmares since they first got stuck on the inflatable. He couldn't recall exactly what they were about, but he remembered that the past few nights he had woken from were all in trembling, cold sweats. As far as he knew, the one he had just awaken from was the first one about Bill. He hadn't thought about that triangular devil in years and so having a sudden nightmare about him caught him off guard.

He considered mentioning it to Ford, although knowing him, he would probably start putting together some paranoid conspiracy theories on Bill coming back.

 _Please. The demon was dead_ , Stan thought to himself.

He knew that they had wiped him from his mind already. For that reason, he was willing to just brush it off and keep it to himself. Maybe being stuck out in the middle of the ocean was just bringing out the worst ideas in him.

"What have you been dreaming about, Stanley? Is it anything serious?" Ford asked, genuinely curious.

"Ehh, it's nothing," Stan lied.

"Are you sure?" Ford asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You know me, Sixer," Stan told him. "I have nightmares on the days I can't find the remote. The ones I'm having now ain't any more serious than that."

"But four nights in a row?" Ford asked, still skeptical. "You never had nightmares before we reached the Arctic."

Stan reached down in one of the pockets of the boat and picked up a piece of half-eaten toast. "Yeah, well, maybe it's because I'm constantly eating nothing but wristwatch toast because that's all we have to eat on this eventual shipwreck," Stan said as he threw the piece of toast over to Ford. He then dipped his hand in the ocean and lightly splashed it around. "Or maybe it's the dehydration. The fact that we're surrounded by all this water, yet we can't even drink any of it!"

"Hey, if you want to drink contaminated salt water, be my guest," Ford said, raising his hands up defensively. "I wouldn't recommend it, but if you're really that persistent…"

"I'm not persistent about anything, Ford," Stan said, crossing his arms. "And I'm not gonna drink salty fish piss. I'm just saying...given our current situation, could you blame me for having a few bad dreams?"

"You miss the kids, don't you?" Ford asked, believing it could be another reason for his nightmares.

Stan thought for a moment before sadly slumping back against the edge of the boat. "I'm just worried we ain't actually gonna make it back to see them."

"Oh, don't be like that," Ford told him. "Look, I know we're not exactly in the best of circumstances right now, but we're still alive. Dehydrated and dirty, but alive. And we've already endured a good few days of this already. If we just stick our necks through a few more, then the ocean current we're on should take us smoothly toward the east coast of the states. Judging by the current wind conditions, that would most likely mean closer to the North, such as Maine or Southern Canada. Anyways, we can freshen up somewhere real quickly before finding a way to get us back to Oregon. Perhaps a bus or a rental. And maybe along the way, I can find a temporary power source to have access to the rest of Meridian's functions beyond offline toast-making."

"And how long's it actually gonna take until we reach land again?" Stan asked as he hung his head out over the edge of the boat, looking out toward the ocean.

"Hmm...let me get my calendar out," Ford said, as he dove into his backpack and pulled out a small calendar. "My initial prediction was about seven days. We arrived and left the weirdness island on the 11th. That would mean arriving approximately on the 18th. And since it's been four days, today's the…" Cutting himself off, Ford's eyes bulged as he came to a sudden realization. "Oh…that's quite...embarrassing"

"What? You finally realized your fly's been down?" Stan asked, not bothering to look back at Ford.

"No, I just found out that…wait, what do you mean  _finally?_ " Ford asked, immediately prompted to look down at the zipper of his jeans. Correcting the error, he looked back at Stan with an irritated look. "Did you seriously know about that this whole time?"

"Maybe," Stan shrugged off. "But what I don't know is what you just realized," Stan said, trying to quickly change back the subject. "So enlighten me."

Ford sighed. "You know what day it is, Stanley?"

"Why are you asking me? You're the one holding a calendar," Stan said, pointing at the calendar in Ford's hands.

"That's not what I was…" Ford began, before deciding it wasn't worth arguing. He let out another sigh of annoyance before looking straight back at Stan. "It's June 15th."

Stan's eyes bulged immediately at this revelation. He turned back toward Ford with a look of disbelief. "Huh. Really?"

"On the dot," Ford nodded, placing the calendar back in his bag. He looked back around at the surrounding ocean. "What a way to be spending it."

Stan stared forward as he continued to process what day it was. "You know...sometimes I wonder if we deserve things like this."

"What?" Ford asked, wondering what Stan was talking about.

"I mean, I've admitted several times before that I'm not that great of a person. I've done lots of bad things. Things I wish I could take back and things I still don't regret. But as twins, you've always been the good one of us," Stan said, pointing at Ford. "Yeah, sure. You've gotten into your own fair share of trouble, whether it'd be something stupid you did as a kid or building a portal of potentially inevitable doom. But despite that, your intentions have always been good. I can't say the same for all of mine. Sure, I spent thirty years trying to get you back home, but I was a mess before that. All the cheating, dealing, smuggling I used to do to try to make my own way around. On the other hand, you were in Gravity Falls, researching weirdness and making decent money. A demon in your head aside, I'd say you had it pretty good. But it only took me sending you off and pretending to be you to actually make a buck."

"Stanley, what are you on about?"

"I'm saying that this situation- I deserve it. You, however, don't. Not as much as me, at least. For all the years I've been a screw-up, you don't even compare," Stan continued ranting. "The only one of us who deserves to have this day stuck out in the middle of the ocean is me. You should be back home with the kids already. I'll stay on this boat. I'll take on the suffering. Without anything to guide me, I'll travel the cold, dry, relentless path of inevitable death all on my own." Stan stood up on his feet and raised his fist in the air angrily. "You're all gonna die anyway! Why not have  _him_  take that trip first?! Give you and the kids a few more days before I come knocking on your door just to send you along with him?! Once he gets what's coming to him, I'm coming for you next! I'm going to find and I'm gonna get EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU!"

Ford sat still with a look of pure shock and confusion as he stared at Stan after his mindless rambling. Never has he ever heard him talk the way he did. His words were weirdly out of character for him. It was as if someone else was talking through him. Who was 'he'? Who was he ranting about? Who was he gonna find and get? Was he threatening him, Dipper, and Mabel?

As Stan took deep breaths after his enraged rant, he suddenly displayed a confused look. He quickly glanced around at himself and his surroundings. He then looked at Ford, noticing how weirdly he was looking back at him.

"What?" Stan asked, wondering what Ford's look was about.

"What do you mean 'what'?" Ford asked, raising an eyebrow. "What the hell was all of that about?"

"What was what about?"

"That big rant of yours," Ford reminded him. "What else would I be talking about?"

Stan rubbed the back of his neck, trying to recall what Ford was talking about. "I think I know what you're talking about, but at the same time, I really don't know what you're talking about."

"Is this some sort of joke?" Ford asked, skeptical about Stan's behavior. "You just stood in front of me ranting about our past and how you wanted someone to die. Then you started yelling at me saying that after this person died, you were gonna kill me and the kids. It was like hearing another drunken speech from one of my cross-dimensional friends that I had met in the portal. Except, I know that  _you_  haven't been drinking."

Stan sat down and laid his head back on the edge of the boat, thinking about what Ford was telling him. At that point, he had no recollection of such rant. "I...I don't know, Sixer. I really don't. Maybe the dehydration is messing me up more than I thought."

Ford narrowed his eyes at him skeptically, still unsure. But he knew Stan was already suffering in the head due to the nightmares, so perhaps this was another follow up. It was strange because he's been enduring the same conditions as him and he hasn't had any nightmares or need to go on long, mindless rants. Maybe it had something to do with what Bill's friends did to him back at the Arctic mountain. Whatever it was, there was nothing Ford could do to help at that moment. They had to keep sailing and wait until they were at a doctor or in his lab again to see if something was truly wrong with him.

Or who knows? Maybe it was just dehydration that has been messing him up. Whatever the case may be, the best thing for Stan at that moment may have been to just get more rest.

"Get some sleep," Ford suggested as he turned to look forward on the boat. "Maybe you'll be better when you wake up. I'll just keep watch up ahead."

"Yeah, yeah, alright," Stan said as he turned over to his side in a more comfortable resting position. "Oh, and Stanford?"

"Yes?"

"I almost didn't say anything because this is an odd way for us to be spending today, but in case it doesn't go without saying...Happy Birthday."

Ford glanced back at Stan and smiled warmly. "Happy Birthday, Stanley."

Stan smiled back at him before shutting his eyes. Ford watched him doze off before looking back forward in the direction they were sailing. He lied on his stomach and rested his head on his arms on the edge of the boat. He continued to just stare off into the distance as the rising sun continued beating down on him from behind. Eventually, he found himself drifting off as well. Struggling to stay awake, his eyes shut and he fell fast asleep as well. The two twins knocked out cold as they continued to calmly sail ahead.

* * *

_CRASH!_

The loud booming noise was enough to startle Ford awake. He rubbed his eyes as he sat back up and proceeded to look above. His eyes bulged in fear as he immediately noticed the large amounts of ominous, dark grey clouds. A large storm was in the works and their small inflatable boat was about to head right into it. Daylight was quickly fading as the sun started to hide underneath the dark clouds. As they rushed up above, Ford already began to feel tiny droplets of drizzle splash against the exposed skin of his face and hands.

"Oh Lord…" Ford said quietly to himself, growing nervous.

He turned back around in the boat and saw that his brother was still asleep.

"STANLEY!" Ford called out to him as the winds began picking up. "STANLEY! GET UP!"

Stan didn't move a bit, too deep in his sleep to hear a thing he just said. Ford then began moving over toward him as fast he could to wake him up. It wouldn't have been a difficult task if the ground wasn't so rubbery and the boat wasn't starting to move more violently. Eventually, he made it over to his side.

"STANLEY!" Ford shouted again as he put his hands on his arm and started shaking him. "WAKE UP!"

Stan snorted as he finally opened his eyes, not having a clue what was happening. "W-wha…?"

"Get up, Stan! Quickly!" Ford told him as he began moving back to the front of the boat.

Slightly disoriented, Stan was about to ask him why. However, one quick glance up above at the impending supercell they were about to float directly under was enough warning for him. To add to that warning, a large flash of lightning struck in the near distance, along with another thunderous boom that sent a chill down his spine.

"Oh sh-" he mouthed quietly before turning back to his brother, who returned to his place at the front of the inflatable. "So, uh...Stanford? Really hoping you have a plan here…"

"I do have a plan," Ford nodded back at him. "We face it head on."

Stan's eyes bulged in horror. "Could you have possibly suggested a worse plan?"

"Yeah...I could've suggested getting out and swimming!" Ford argued.

"Alright, point taken…" Stan said in response to Ford's snark. "But that doesn't make  _this_  plan any less stupid!"

"We're on an inflatable boat without an engine, rows, or anything to steer us, Stanley!" Ford reminded him, shouting through the winds and crashing waves as the storm progressively became more aggressive. "I admit, it's not a plan I take pride in, but it's the best we can do for now!" he told Stan as he turned himself forward again. "NOW, HOLD ON!"

Stan sat back in his place in the back of the boat and gripped onto two handles at the bottom as tightly as he could. He tried to look up, but the rain soon came pouring down hard and droplets smeared all over the lens of his glasses. He wanted to clear them, but the waves were becoming very aggressive and just about every second, the boat rocked violently from side to side. While he wanted to clear his lenses and see what was happening, he felt safer just holding onto the two handles.

Ford continued to take a stand at the front of the boat, trying his hardest to keep viewing out ahead of them. It wasn't easy, as the distant fog and heavy rain were making it really difficult.

Suddenly, a large wave overshadowed the front of the boat, catching Ford off guard as it crashed right on top of him and the boat itself. Ford yelped as he got slammed down to the bottom by the water. Stan also suddenly felt the pouring of water from the wave, whimpering slightly in fear as he still couldn't see a thing that was going on.

"You still with me, Sixer?!" Stan called out to Ford, growing slightly concerned.

"I'm here! I'm fine!" Ford assured him as he got back on his feet. "God, I've had it with these damn waves!"

Another large shadow suddenly came over them, with Stan noticing it due to the increase in darkness. "Why is it getting darker?"

Ford turned around as he noticed the shadow too. His eyes bulged and his mouth hung agape as he came to view an even bigger wave. Growing up on a beach, Ford had seen a bunch of big waves in his time. But the wave that overshadowed them was possibly bigger than any wave he had ever seen before.

"STANLEY! WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T LET GO OF THOSE HANDLES!" Ford warned.

"YOU DON'T HAVE TO TELL ME TWICE!" Stan replied, gripping the handles even tighter with this warning.

Ford kneeled down at the front of the boat and got down on his knees. He then reached his hands and gripped the boat handles parallel to the ones Stan held onto. He looked at the giant wave that they were close to making direct contact with and took a deep breath for his life.

Right before making contact with the wave, another wave formed directly behind them, spawning a second wave that suddenly propelled them forward. The wave caught Ford by surprise as he turned back to look at the wave they were riding. He looked up at saw how close they were to the giant wave and began screaming.

The wave they were riding was on their side, however. It not only propelled them forward but rose them even higher into the air before making its crash against the rest of the water. This resulted in the Stans being sent flying forward, crashing directly through the middle of the giant wave and out the other side. The impact of the wave had sent Ford flying back toward Stan in the back of the boat. The brothers then screamed for their lives as they flew through the air, eventually settling as they landed back into the water, which seemed to have gotten a bit more calm.

Head lying on his brother's lap, Ford opened his eyes soon after and noticed they were okay. He leaned himself back up and looked around at his surroundings. The storm seemed to have suddenly taken a small break, as the hard rain turned back to drizzle and the high winds seemed to slow back down to small gusts. The waves weren't all that violent anymore either. The sky was still covered in dark clouds, so it was only a matter of time before they found out whether they had faced most of the storm or if it was brewing something worse.

Either way, Ford couldn't help but smile in celebration of their survival, having just flown through a giant wave. "HAHAHA!"

"What?" Stan asked, finally working the courage to take a split second to wipe his glasses. "What happened? Is it over?"

"Probably not," Ford admitted. "I'm just happy to be alive. That was thrilling!"

"You think this is thrilling?" Stan asked, dumbfounded by this comment. "Weren't you the one who used to be too scared to go on a slide because of how high it was? A slide that was only five feet tall?"

"Ironic, I know," Ford shrugged off, not ashamed of his past. "But think of it, Stan. We just flew through a giant wave in an inflatable boat! We shouldn't even be alive right now!" Ford chuckled happily as he examined the inflatable itself. "I designed this backup myself, but even I wasn't sure about how foolproof it was. Especially after losing the engine so quickly. Maybe she can handle more than I thought."

"Including large sea monsters?" Stan asked.

"Well, that's a bit broad," Ford replied as he thought about the question. "I don't doubt that some creatures may be capable of destroying it, but I believe we can withstand a fair bit too."

"Well, let's hope  _that thing_  is one we can withstand," Stan told Ford as he pointed off in a direction to the left of them.

Ford turned to look where Stan was pointing and noticed that there was a large head of some sort punching through the water. The darkness caused by the storm made it difficult to identify, but he thought it looked familiar. The head appeared to move slowly at an angle that got closer to them, but not directly toward them.

"I think...we've seen that thing before…" Ford told Stan, stroking his chin curiously.

Once the head got close enough, Ford was able to make note of some characteristics. The head in itself was generally a red shade, but accompanying it were spots of blue and purple.

A lightbulb lit above Ford's head. "A Snacken!"

"You mean one of those giant octopuses that attacked us when we were on our way to the Arctic?" Stan asked, beginning to become somewhat panicked.

"Yes, yes, I know," Ford nodded, trying to calm Stan's fears. "But there's no need to worry."

"Why not? That thing nearly tore the Stan O' War II apart!" Stan reminded him. "When we still had it…"

"Well, I have a strong feeling that this could be that same Snacken we encountered previously," Ford explained to him. "Having sailed as far from the Arctic as we have to find a Snacken that had traveled just as far as us in the same time frame, I find it unlikely that we could have stumbled upon an entirely new one."

"New one or old one, it's still a giant, ugly octopus that will try to kill us!" Stan told him.

"I don't think so," Ford said as he examined the Snacken from the distance. "Something else I learned when studying these creatures is that they become neutral toward those who have previously fed them." Ford turned to look at Stan. "And we fed it a box of Frooby Frebbles before. If this is the same one, then perhaps it would remember us."

Suddenly, their boat was rocked violently, causing the two to fall down. They looked up and immediately saw the Snacken rising right above them. As the two were looking at and talking to one another before, they had failed to notice that the Snacken had noticed them and made an immediate beeline for their boat. It lunged itself at the twins and let out a loud, angry roar right in their faces.

Ford was immediately struck with fear again. "NEVERMIND! IT DOESN'T REMEMBER US! IT DOES  _NOT_ REMEMBER US!"

"YEAH, I WAS ABOUT TO SAY- THAT DOESN'T SOUND VERY NEUTRAL!" Stan shouted at him, also startled by the Snacken's aggression.

The Snacken reached one of its tentacles for Ford, but he jumped backward out of its grasp. Due to this, the Snacken's tentacle made contact with the boat itself. With its heavy weight, the side Stan and Ford sat on was lifted upwards as the tentacle splashed the other end down. They began sliding down the other end, but this was soon stopped as the Snacken lifted its tentacle back up, bringing the other side of the boat back up and evening out both sides.

"GREAT! HOW ARE WE GONNA GET OUT OF THIS ONE?!" Stan asked Ford, completely unsure how they are capable of escaping their situation.

"IT'S HUNGRY! IT JUST NEEDS TO BE FED!" Ford reminded him of the Snacken's aggressive behavior when hungry.

Stan looked around the boat quickly and noticed the half-eaten toast that he had tossed over at Ford earlier in the day. As it sat soaked up in a puddle of ocean water, he quickly grabbed it.

"How about a knuckle sandwich? Except with a hundred percent less knuckle!" he shouted as he threw the soaked up toast at the Snacken.

"STANLEY! NO!" Ford shouted as he noticed what Stan had thrown.

Seeing what was thrown at it, the Snacken opened its mouth for the expected food. It took in the wet, salty toast and swallowed it. Almost immediately after, it began screaming violently as it backed up slightly from the boat.

"HAHA!" Stan exclaimed victoriously. "I did it, Sixer! I saved us! And I managed to work in a neat joke with it too!"

"First of all, Stan, that joke couldn't have been any more terrible," Ford said, rolling his eyes. "Second, WHY THE HELL DID YOU FEED IT THAT TOAST?!"

"You said it was hungry! So, I fed it!" Stan told him. "Look at it! It's reacting just like it did when we fed it the cereal! It loves it!"

"No, it doesn't! Snackens like sugary foods! They LOATHE the taste of salt and it only increases their aggressive tendencies!" Ford told him. "And with that toast soaking up all that salty ocean water? You're just pissing it off even more!"

"Hold on! If they hate salt so much, why do they swim in the ocean?" Stan asked.

"THIS ISN'T ITS HOME DIMENSION, YOU KNUCKLEHEAD! This is not the type of water they're used to swimming in!" Ford reminded him angrily, before taking a second to actually process this thought. "Although, maybe you have a point! Perhaps the salt water naturally aggravates them and that's why it doesn't remember us! Combined with the hunger, that basically provides for the highest potential aggression from them."

Suddenly, the Snacken reappeared directly behind the boat, roaring angrily as it flailed its tentacles at them.

"Also, combined with that toast you gave it," Ford added as he stared back up at the angry Snacken.

"Gee," Stan said as he rolled his eyes at Ford. "I appreciate the last minute jab, Six-"

Before Stan could finish his remark, the Snacken very suddenly and swiftly smacked him right off the boat with one of its tentacles, sending him flying in another direction for a moment.

"STANLEY!" Ford cried out as he saw Stan soar away from the boat.

Stan made a violent crash against the water, managing to sink a few feet under as a result of the Snacken's strength. He quickly floated back up to surface, but the Snacken's hit was hard enough to knock him unconscious. However, he had managed to float back up on his back, allowing him to still be able to breathe with his head and mouth still facing upward, above water.

However, he had been smacked too far away from the boat for Ford to make this observation. All he saw in the distance was his brother's body floating on the water with small waves pushing him away. The sight was horrifying to him, as he wasn't even sure if he had survived or not.

"STANLEY!" Ford called out again.

The Snacken gave a loud, vicious roar yet again, prompting Ford to turn back to it. He immediately saw how it was about to strike down another one of its tentacles back on the boat, and potentially him. At this point, Ford knew the inflatable was unsavable. He had no clue how it hadn't popped long before, but there was no way it would withstand yet another direct Snacken hit. It may have been the only thing keeping them from swimming, but at that point, it didn't matter much to him anymore.

Ford turned away from the Snacken and promptly dove into the water at the same time the Snacken's tentacle came crashing down on the inflatable. As Ford predicted, the impact decimated the boat, officially forcing the twins into having to swim. If they were able to escape their current situation, that is.

Head popping back out of the water, Ford began swimming as fast he could toward Stan's unconscious body. There was a fair distance between the two of them, but without the boat, there was no reason for him to not make an attempt to close the gap.

"I'M COMING, STANLEY!" Ford called out again despite knowing he probably couldn't hear him. "DON'T WORRY!"

Despite his efforts to reach his brother, Ford was barely able to catch up by more than a few feet before he felt one of the Snacken's tentacles wrap around him, pulling him out of the water.

"NOOO!" Ford cried out as he desperately attempted to escape its initial grasp.

He realized his attempt had failed as he soon found himself eye-to-eye with the creature itself. For such a brightly colored and beautiful looking creature, it had one of the most horrifying angry sides that he had ever faced in an abnormal creature before.

He tried to free himself from the creature's grasp again but was unsuccessful. Realizing he was tightly embedded within the Snacken's tentacle, he didn't have much choice for escape.

That was until he recalled a tactic he had used to escape a similar situation once before. One that he didn't consider very favorable, but he had no other choice. He looked directly into the Snacken's eyes again as he gave a stern, yet guilty look.

"Forgive me for this, as I know you truly don't mean as much harm as you present," Ford told the Snacken before he leaned his head down, opening his mouth wide before giving a sharp bite on the Snacken's soft, fleshy tentacle.

The bite immediately inflicted a sharp pain in the Snacken, as it gave off a wincing screech. However, it still didn't let go of Ford. Instead, as it recovered from the bite, it gave him an angry glare as it began growling.

"Uh, oh," Ford said nervously upon realizing his mistake.

The Snacken gave out one final roar of pure anger before lifting Ford further up in the air and pitching him across the ocean. Ford screamed as he quickly flew at a downwards angle while still being propelled forward quite a bit. The throw sent him even farther than the hit had sent Stan, as he saw himself pass over him. He looked forward and braced himself for the upcoming impact with the water, shutting his eyes tightly and holding his breath.

Eventually, he crashed hard into the water, also sinking a few feet underwater due to the strength of the throw. He ascended back to the top unconscious, body turning upwards, which gave him the ability to breathe as he floated. The brutal impact of the water was enough to knock him out.

The Snacken had made a retreat in another direction, leaving the two knocked out brothers on their own as they floated slowly and peacefully along the ocean current. At that same moment, the storm appeared to start dissipating, with the winds and waves calming down as the sun started to pierce through the thinning clouds.

* * *

When Ford came to, he didn't immediately realize he was waking up. Instead, he let himself lay for a few minutes with his eyes shut. But after those few minutes, he became aware of his own consciousness, feeling the heat of the beaming sun against his face. If he had let this go on any further, he knew he'd be risking a bad sunburn. He opened his eyes as he slowly sat up from the ground. Disoriented, he rubbed his eyes and face, both which were very sore for making direct contact with the ocean hours ago.

As his disorientation slowly faded, he eventually realized that he was sitting on an actual surface rather than floating in the middle of the ocean. Sand, to be precise. As he glanced around quickly, he realized he was sitting on a sandy beach, although his legs were still making contact with the ocean as waves breached the shore.

"Land…" he said to himself as he rubbed his hands through the sand. "Already? God, how long have I been out?"

" _HMMMMPHHHH!_ " was a sudden muffled noise that sounded vaguely like his brother.

"Stanley?" Ford questioned as he quickly looked around the beach for his brother. Not immediately spotting him, he stood back up on his feet to get a better view. "Stanley?!"

" _HMMMMMMMMMMMPHHHHHHHH!_ "

"GAH!" Ford exclaimed as he looked right behind him. His eyes then bulged in slight surprise at what he saw right before him. "S-Stanley?"

" _Hmmmmphh._ "

Right in front of him stood Stan. However, there was a small creature that appeared to have wrapped itself around his head.

Upon a longer look, Ford made out the details of the creature, with the color scheme very reminiscent of a Snacken's. Red with blue and purple spots. As he looked around Stan, he was able to spot the eyes and confirmed that it was, indeed, a much smaller Snacken. Presumably a baby. Certainly, a very young one, as its size didn't compare to the one that they had faced before. While the previous one was larger than the sum of five adult elephants, this one was only about the size of a fishbowl. Its tentacles were wrapped around Stan's neck as the rest of his head appeared to be stuck in its mouth.

"Oh, boy," Ford said, cracking a slight smile out of amusement for the sight, suppressing his urge to laugh.

" _HMMMMMPHHHH HMMMMMPHHHH HMMPH HMMPH HMMMMMMPH!_ " Stan shouted angrily, voice still muffled inside the Snacken's mouth.

While Ford couldn't understand what he was saying, his demand was clear. "Alright, alright! I'll get it off you!" Ford placed his hands on the little Snacken and began to pull, although the Snacken had a very good grasp of Stan and wasn't easy to pull away. "Let's...hope...I don't...tear off...your head...WITH IT!"

Ford popped the Snacken right off of Stan's head, which upon first sight, was completely red. Stan took some heavy gasps for air as he breathed heavily. He wiped his face clean of Snacken saliva with his shirt.

"Thanks, Sixer…" Stan thanked as he looked at his brother, before glancing back at the Snacken in his hands. "GAH! It's one of  _those!_ "

"Relax!" Ford said, gesturing for him to calm down. "It's just a young one! Look at it!"

Stan raised his hands forward in protest as he backed up. "I think I've seen more than enough of  _that_ thing! Get rid of it! Throw it away! I don't want anything to do with it!"

Stan walked away from the shore and up the beach, leaving Ford alone with the Snacken in hand. "Aw, c'mon, Stanley! It's a cute little thing!" Despite his attempts to convince Stan, he had already walked far enough, making it clear he didn't want to see it anymore. "Such a drama queen he can be."

Ford walked back down to the edge of the shore where the waves kept coming in. He held out the baby Snacken with only one of his hands toward the ocean.

"Well, little fella. It was nice to meet you, but you don't quite belong to us," Ford told it, the Snacken looking right back at him with its large, youthful eyes. "Be free."

Ford shook his hand, attempting to drop the Snacken back into the ocean. However, the Snacken wrapped its little tentacles around his hand, refusing to let go.

"C'mon, now," Ford said as he tried to pull the Snacken's tentacles loose from his hand. "You have a family somewhere to go back to. Go on."

The Snacken continued to refuse, keeping a tight hold on Ford's hand. A hold tight enough to start cutting off his blood flow, which he found to become quite uncomfortable by the minute.

"C'mon, you!" Ford exclaimed as he tried more forcefully to pull the Snacken away. After a brief struggle, he managed to successfully pull it off his hand, holding it up by its head so its tentacles couldn't reach him quite as easy. "There we go," he said as he proceeded to place the Snacken back into the ocean. "There. Now be free!"

As Ford walked away from it, the baby Snacken's eyes narrowed. It then proceeded to speedily crawl its way back over to him. Following quietly behind him, it jumped and latched itself right around his ankle, prompting him to stop.

"What the-?" Ford questioned as he looked back down at his ankle, spotting the Snacken. Rather than getting angry that it wouldn't go away, he was charmed by its persistence. "You're a determined little one, aren't ya?" He bent down and held its hand out to it, to which the Snacken immediately latched onto from his leg. Ford held it back up in front of him and examined it. He smiled. "Interesting. Definitely not as aggressive as who I presume to be your mother," Ford said, thinking back to the female Snacken that had tried to kill him and Stan earlier.

He then began to ponder on the idea of letting the baby Snacken go. In the short time he had spent in the Colorful Creature dimension, he didn't have too long to get to know these creatures any more than the basic info he had learned about them. The idea of bringing the little Snacken back to Gravity Falls for further study seemed like it could be beneficial knowledge for understanding the creature more. And it didn't appear to want to go back into the ocean, which he felt made the idea a bit more acceptable. If it was any normal Earth sea creature, he would continue pushing it until it left. However, this was a being from another dimension. While its mother may have been out there, it probably wouldn't be wise to let it back into the open ocean where it could possibly reproduce with normal octopuses and risk a potential havoc in their own dimension.

"Perhaps, it's best that I take you back with us for ethical study," Ford told it with a smile. He also knew that in other cases, letting the abnormal creature back into the ocean would make it accessible to other scientists who might plan on doing terrible things to it. Being someone who has an actual understanding of weirdness like the Snacken, he knew how to treat it best without causing any harm. "Alright, you're coming along."

The Snacken made a very quiet little squealing noise and waved its tentacles around happily as if it was responding to Ford's statement. Ford was surprised by its ability to understand him and clearly emote the way that it did. It then crawled from his hand to his back and planted itself on his jacket, causing Ford to chuckle.

"I'll have to find a better place to put you than my back," Ford said, before thinking of using his backpack. However, he quickly realized that it was likely gone with the remains of the inflatable boat when it was destroyed. A slight annoyance due to the navigating tools he had carried along with them, but it wasn't his biggest concern at that moment.

He proceeded to walk up the beach with the Snacken to get back to Stan and let him know that he was bringing it back to Gravity Falls with them. Something he knew he was going to initially protest due to it being wrapped around his head before, but he truly didn't care for his opinion, knowing he didn't have the same passion for weirdness that he did.

Once he reached the edge of the beach, he spotted Stan standing still, looking away from him. He promptly walked up to him, ready to reveal the Snacken to him.

"Stanley, you're probably not gonna like this, but I've decided I'm bringing the little Snacken back with us to Gravity Falls for studying," he told him as he stepped up beside him with his back facing him to show the Snacken. "Also, there's nothing you can do to change my mind," he quickly added.

However, Stan didn't respond or react to him. Instead, he continued to stand frozen in place, staring straight forward with his mouth agape. He appeared shocked, as if he had just seen something truly scarring or unbelievable.

Ford waved his hand out in front of Stan's face, trying to grab his attention. "Hello? Stan? Is everything okay?"

With one hand, Stan grabbed his wrist and stopped him from waving in front of him. With his other hand, he pointed up above right in the direction he was staring at. "Look at the sign, Poindexter..."

Ford turned his head where Stan was pointing, just noticing that there was an active city right beside the beach. People riding bicycles, driving cars, and just passing by on the sidewalks. Small buildings and parlors selling food and other goods to obvious tourists in the area. In the distance, there was also a strangely familiar pier a few miles away. These were things Ford noticed before he laid eyes on the sign that Stan was talking about.

And upon reading it, he became just as shocked.

The two brothers stood completely frozen, mouths hung wide open, staring directly at a sign that read 'Glass Shard Beach: Home of Glass Shard Water Toffee!'

Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey

"I-I don't believe it…" Ford managed to say through his shock, mind racing in multiple different directions at that moment.

Stan's eye twitched as he continued to reread the sign over and over. He wanted to make sure he wasn't hallucinating, although half of him kind of hoped that he was. But through ever reread of the sign, he found himself mentally saying the same words. He almost didn't want to admit it.

But he did.

"We're...home…"

 


	22. Those Old Jersey Shores: Part 2

"Glass Shard Beach?!" Ford exclaimed in disbelief as he continued to stare at the city sign. "How is this possible? We came from the Arctic! How does an ocean current carry us all the way to Jersey?"

"You're missing the point, Sixer," Stan said as he glanced over at Ford. "Out of all the places we could have landed after all this time, how the hell is it that we land in our childhood home?"

"Well, yes, I suppose that's a far more interesting question that I, too, am wondering," Ford agreed as he rubbed his chin curiously. "But I'm still trying to figure out the logic of all of this. Four days slowly floating out in the middle of the ocean, a storm hits along with a Snacken attack that knocks us out and leads to us washing up on a New Jersey beach. I predicted Northern Maine or Southern Canada, but New Jersey is much further South than those predictions!" He began to look back towards the beach behind them. "Perhaps, the storm's wind and the Snacken sent us floating in another direction, but how did we manage to float off completely unscathed while keeping us completely together? Everything about our current situation seems completely impossible!"

Another moment of thinking passed and Ford suddenly considered a morbid possibility.

"Are we dead?" Ford questioned fearfully, placing his hands on his face to feel his own presence. "Maybe we died and it sent us back to the place it all began!" He proceeded to fall to his knees weakly. "Oh, God! Is this what death is like? Is this really it? Have we really reached the end of the inevitable line? Is this how it feels?!"

Ford's panicking was immediately cut as he was promptly struck across the face by his own brother.

"Does it feel like that, you freakin' lunatic?" Stan asked as he retracted his hand.

Ford rubbed his face as he began thinking sensibly again. "Alright, I admit- I deserved that. I am calm now," he assured Stan as he stood back on his feet. "Anyways, what do we do now?"

"We need to find mom and dad," Stan suggested without hesitation. He promptly began walking down the sidewalk as if it was a decision with no need for questioning.

Standing in place for a brief moment to process this response, Ford's eyes suddenly bulged in surprise. "What?!" he exclaimed before running to catch up beside Stan, who didn't stop walking. "Mom and dad?! Are you crazy?! We haven't seen them in years!"

"Sooo, then I say it's a good time as any to see them again," Stan said, not seeing the problem in the idea of visiting their parents again.

"You're kidding me, right?" Ford asked, still stunned by Stan's tenacity with his idea.

"What's wrong, Sixer?" Stan asked as he suddenly came to a stop on the sidewalk. "You don't want to see our folks again?"

"You know  _damn right_  that that's not my issue, Stanley," Ford said, narrowing his eyes at his brother's assumption that he wouldn't want to visit their parents again. "My issue is that you told me you haven't spoken to them  _once_ since getting kicked out of the house. Not even under  _my_ name! So they still think that  _you're_  dead! And who knows what they even think of me if you haven't kept up with them since you faked your death? The son who went off to live in Oregon and never bothered calling for over thirty years." Ford kept contemplating his issues with the overall idea. "And that's another thing. It's been thirty years. And as much as I don't even want to  _CONSIDER_  this possibility, are they even alive?"

Stan thought over the question for a moment and Ford's general concerns, not quite sure how to answer. He didn't want to admit it, but they were things he wondered as well. To him though, there was no other way they were gonna get the answer than going after it themselves. "I guess we'll just have to find out."

He then continued walking down the sidewalk, leaving Ford standing in place again, still trying to figure out whether this was a good idea or not. "Stanley, you can't seriously be insistent on finding and knocking on our parents' door to say hello after over thirty years."

"Yes, I seriously  _am_ , Stanford," Stan said stubbornly as he stopped again to turn back to his brother. "Think about it. We're stuck out in the middle of the ocean for days. Then one day, we suddenly hit shore and out of all the places we end up, it's our childhood home. On top of that, it's our  _birthday_."

"So what if a bunch of unlikely coincidences occurred to bring us to this point?" Ford asked with his arms raised as he walked back up to Stan.

"These ain't coincidences, Poindexter," Stan disagreed. "It's fate. It has to be."

"Fate, Stanley? Really?" Ford asked, raising an eyebrow skeptically. "Since when have you been a believer in fate?"

"Since the kids came into my life and brought the pieces I've been searching thirty years for to bring you out of that portal," Stan said, getting deep into his thoughts.

The response surprised Ford, prompting him to think back to what had gone on before the portal incident itself. The fact he had left Stan with the first journal and he couldn't find the other two for thirty years until the year Dipper and Mabel had come to Gravity Falls. The series of events that transpired earlier that summer to bring them right into his brother's hands were started by those two.

As an investigator, Ford has usually been one to look at things from a scientific and logical approach, despite his research in abnormal beings. He never looked to something like as superstitious as fate too often. However, when he thinks back to that summer, he thinks back to something during Weirdmageddon. They may have defeated Bill Cipher by wiping him clean from Stan's mind, but that wasn't their originally planned method.

There was a prophecy he discovered in a cave years before including various symbols arranged on a large wheel. He didn't know what a fair amount of the symbols meant at the time, but the second he stood in Bill's pyramid surrounded by friends, family, and a bunch of other Gravity Falls townsfolk, he knew exactly what it all meant. It was destiny. The kids that he had just come to meet that summer were actually the ones that were meant to help save the town and the rest of the world.

Fate. Perhaps, it wasn't that far-fetched after all.

"Sure, it ain't the best idea showing up at their doorstep suddenly after over thirty years. Especially when they still think I'm dead," Stan agreed as he looked out at the ocean. "Yeah, they'll probably be shocked to see us again. Yeah, they'll probably be terrified to see me again. Yeah, they might faint. Yeah, we might have to take them to the hospital after that. Yeah, after they wake up, we'll have to give a much-needed explanation that neither of us really want to give. Yeah, they'll be really mad at us. Yeah, they'll give us a long, angry rant about how everything we've done has affected them."

He stopped speaking for a moment as he began to picture an image in his own head. As he painted this mental picture, he clenched his fist as he suppressed the emotions that started to build up inside. Ford gave him a look of concern as he noticed the growing silence in the midst of his brother's words.

"But then, after all of that is done…" Stan continued, unclenching his fist. "...they'll see how much we've grown. They'll see the men we've become. The things we've done. Mom will be happy to see that her two boys are actually alive and had finally made it somewhere in the world. And dad...maybe he'll actually be impressed."

"You...you wanna impress dad?" Ford asked, raising an eyebrow. "After all he had done to you?"

"I want him to see that after all he's done and all that crap I've dealt with, a knucklehead  _can_ still make it," Stan said, clenching his fist. "Maybe not with the millions he wanted, but with the dignity of being able to show up at his door after all this time. With how much time he spent trying to toughen me up as a kid, maybe that'll show him that I really am tough."

Realizing how off track he was getting about trying to prove his dad wrong, he shook his head and shifted himself back to the main topic.

"But that's not the point," Stan cleared up. "The point is- in the end, we'll all be together again. And that's what matters most."

Ford stared at Stan, trying to mentally picture this overall description as well. The more he thought about, the mistier his own eyes started to get. However, he fought back his own feelings too, knowing that it wasn't an appropriate moment to let them loose. Especially in public. But despite Stan's prediction relying on a very specific scenario and sequence of events, that didn't make his words any less convincing.

"Alright, Stanley. I'll bite," Ford nodded, finally giving in to Stan's suggestion and desire to see their parents again. "I suppose a family reunion is long overdue anyway."

Stan looked over at Ford and smiled warmly knowing that his brother is on board with him and his idea. He looked down the beach again and continued to get lost in the sight. Being out in the middle of the ocean for several days straight made the ocean a tiring view. However, being home again and seeing the waves crash against the Jersey shores seemed to very quickly reawaken his love for the ocean view again.

"I miss this view," Ford said as he also stared off into the direction of the beach.

"I do too," Stan nodded in agreement.

"I feel like I can still envision ourselves running through the sand when we were kids," Ford said as he took a few steps forward for a slightly better view.

"Yeah," Stan agreed, stepping beside him and placing his hands in his pockets. "The days we sat on the swings; the time we spent working on the first Stan O' War; the days we used to play Pirates."

Ford raised an eyebrow. "Well, I recall the swings and building the Stan O' War, but playing Pirates? What was that?"

That stung Stan a little, considering he had dreamed earlier that Ford had recalled the game himself. He doesn't necessarily blame him for not remembering it right away because it has been awhile, but he hoped that he had shared the memory as closely as he did to still remember it.

"Pirates was...erm…" Stan began, trying to figure out the best way to explain it. "Pirates was a game we made that we used to play..."

* * *

"Alright, Sixer. You ready?"

"Ready!"

From behind the cabin of a wooden shipwreck popped out a young Stanley Pines, holding a small cardboard sword. He wore his usual white and red striped shirt, however, the sleeves were ripped off. He also wore a pirate hat made out of folded paper with a poorly draw crossbones symbol on the front in black marker. And over his left eye, he wore an eyepatch.

" _Arg!_  I'm Captain Pines!" Stan announced as he raised his cardboard sword in the air before getting into a battle stance. "Who dares invade me ship?"

Stepping out from behind the other side of the shipwreck's cabin stood a young Stanford Pines. He stood without his jacket, simply donning his white undershirt with his short-sleeves rolled up rather than torn off. He wore a similar paper pirate hat to Stan's, but it was much more neatly put together and had an artistically designed crossbones symbol. Rather than a sword, Ford simply equipped two cardboard hook hands, one per hand.

"It is I- Sailor Hooks!" Ford announced as he stood across from Stan on the shipwreck.

"Huh?" Stan questioned as he eyeballed Ford's two hook hands.

"I said...it is I- Sailor-"

"No, I mean what's with the two hook hands?" Stan asked with a light chuckle. "They look stupid."

"Some pirates and sailors actually had both of their hands torn off by the beasts of the sea," Ford explained his brother. "It's not inaccurate."

"Yeah, but again- it looks stupid," Stan reiterated as he walked up to Ford and lightly poked one of his hooks with the tip of his cardboard sword. "I mean, if you wore a night mask to sleep the night before, how do you remove it without poking your eyes out?"

"Pirates don't wear night masks," Ford reminded him. "They wear eyepatches."

"Yeah, well, a pirate's going to need two eyepatches if they had two hook hands like yours," Stan chuckled.

Ford didn't take too kindly to his joke and simply sighed sadly before hopping off the shipwreck and walking off. Stan raised an eyebrow in confusion as he noticed his brother leave him.

"Hey, Sailor Hooks!" Stan called out to Ford as he hopped off the shipwreck himself and ran after him. "Where're ya going?"

Ford eventually plopped down in the sand and sat sadly as Stan approached him. "I don't want to play pirates anymore."

"What?" Stan asked in surprise as he stood in front of him. "Why not?"

"Because you're making fun of my hook hands," Ford said as he looked away from his brother dejectedly.

"I was just messing around," Stan told him as he crossed his arms defensively. "Take a joke, Poindexter."

"Why take a joke when I am a joke?" Ford said as he took off his cardboard hook hands and tossed them in the sand. "If you think my hook hands look stupid, then you probably think my six fingers look stupid too. And that all this time, you just didn't want to admit it because you're my brother."

Stan was shocked that Ford would even think that was what he thought. "C'mon, bro. You know I didn't mean stupid like that."

"It's true though," Ford said as he stared at one of his six-fingered hands as he clenched it. "Whether it's fantasy or reality, I'll always be a freak."

"Hey, what have I told you before? You're not a freak," Stan told him as he placed his hand on his shoulder. He then rubbed his chin as he looked at his brother's cardboard hook hands in the sand, beginning to consider a few ideas. "And ya know, now that I think about it, two hook hands actually ain't that bad of an idea."

"Really?" Ford asked as he looked up at Stan.

"Yeah!" Stan nodded reassuringly. "Ya know what two hook hands mean? It means you can do twice the poking!" he said as he promptly poked Ford in the arm multiple times with his two fingers, causing him to smile slightly. "It means you don't need a sword to fight! And it means that you could say you survived up to two attacks by sea monsters and that you lived to tell the tales! You're like a hero!" He then leaned over to his ear and softly reminded him of something else. "And girls love a hero!"

Ford chuckled lightly at this additional comment. "They do, don't they?"

"You bet!" Stan nodded. "So don't worry about your two hook hands and stop worrying about your six fingers! Both are awesome because they aren't normal! And they both come with their pluses."

Ford smiled at his brother as he thought over his words. "Thanks, Stan."

"Anytime, Sixer!" Stan told him as he picked up his two cardboard hook hands and held them out to him. "Now put these back on and let's have a hook-hand-on-sword duel!"

Ford laughed as he accepted the hook hands and promptly stood up from the sand. "Okay, but you'll probably beat me."

"Beat those hook hands of yours?" Stan questioned as he readied his cardboard sword again. "I'm not too sure."

"I guess there's only one way to find out then," Ford said as he jumped into a battle stance, holding out one of his hook hands offensively while holding his other one back defensively. " _En garde!_ "

"We're pirates, Sixer," Stan reminded him with his eyes narrowed at the incorrect term. "Not fencers."

"Oh right," Ford realized with a light chuckle. "I meant,  _ARG!_ "

" _ARG!_ " Stan shouted as he got back into his own battle stance, raising his sword forward, ready to battle.

The two promptly began screaming as they started running toward one another along the beach. Stan charged with his sword pointed forward, while Ford charged swinging his hook hands in the air. Upon closing the gap between the two, they both leaped forward at one another with their attacks prepared.

* * *

"Heh, yeah, I remember that day!" Ford said as he took in the events of that game as Stan explained it to him.

He had slowly begun recollecting the day and what had gone on. The two hook hands. He had completely forgotten about them. Definitely not the most practical idea of his youth, but it made for some good fun.

"You won that duel, didn't you?" Ford asked, not quite remembering the result of that duel, but predicted it to be his brother due to his much more aggressive and rough play as a kid.

"Nope," Stan shook his head. "You did."

"Huh," Ford said, surprised by this answer. However, the reasoning was incredibly apparent to him. "Well, you totally let me win then."

"Actually, I didn't," Stan said as he glanced over at Ford. "You won on your own."

Ford's eyes bulged in surprise by this additional revelation. He glanced over at Stan, scratching the back of his head as he tried to recall this victory in his mind. "I-I did?"

"You did," Stan nodded with a slight smile. "And I was gonna go easy. But I guess I didn't need to."

"Huh," Ford said as he came to terms with this supposed childhood victory. "So two hook hands really  _can_ beat a sword."

"Yep," Stan nodded as he began reflecting on the rest of his early life, including the number of times that Ford had bested him later on as they grew up. "A thought I lived with for years."

Before things got too melancholy, he snapped himself out of it. As great as the sight was, they weren't going to stand around and look at the beach all day. They had to keep moving and find a way to their parents. Wherever they were.

He turned away from the beach and began walking down the sidewalk again, gesturing for Ford to follow along. "C'mon, Sixer. Let's get a move on."

Ford stood in place as he glanced back between the beach and Stan as he walked off. He gave the beach one final long look, admiring its beauty once more.

As he did so, the Snacken on his back finally unplanted itself and moved upwards onto his shoulder, getting a view of the beach as well before glancing over at Ford himself. He looked over at it and gave it a warm, yet gloomy smile.

"Alright," he said as he offered his other hand out to it, prompting the Snacken to latch onto the back of his hand. It was too obvious of a sight on his back, and so moving it over to his hand would provide it some potential cover due to his awareness of it. With it well and secured, he proceeded moving down the sidewalk, slowly following after his brother into the town of Glass Shard Beach. "Let's get moving."

* * *

Glass Shard Beach was a very different town than it used to be. Of course, it had been around forty years since either of the Stan twins had last seen the town, so change was an obvious expectancy. Some buildings appeared newer, suggested by the vibrancy in bright colors and lack of wear. Other buildings, however, had a significant amount of wear and washed up colors from age. The worn buildings were mostly old shacks and gift shops, the kind of places no one cares enough about to keep cleaned up in the town.

Overall, the town itself appeared to have mostly modernized. The kind of people one would expect to see from any other place in the states. Being right beside a beach, it was an obvious tourist spot. People walked the streets snapping pictures of the town with their cell phones. Some were too invested in getting a decent shot that they stood right in the middle of the sidewalk, which brought annoyance to Stan as he struggled to pass one of the said tourists by.

"WOULD YOU GET OUTTA THE WAY?!" Stan scolded the oblivious man in the street, who flinched upon the sudden shouting in his ear. "PEOPLE ARE WALKIN' HERE!"

The man narrowed his eyes at Stan as if he disapproved of his tone, but at the same time, he promptly stood out of the way as he was asked.

Stan didn't bother to thank the man, simply giving him a cold shoulder as he continued walking right past him. The tourists gave him cold stares of dissatisfaction of his mood-ruining scold.

But Stan couldn't care less about what a bunch of tourists thought of him. To him, they were in  _his_  hometown, and to be that oblivious of one's surroundings like that man meant they didn't put up with nearly as much of the same thing as he's ever had.

As low as he thinks of a town like Gravity Falls, he's thankful for its seclusion not warranting nearly as much modernization and trend adaptation by its townsfolk. He knew people there that still didn't know that phones had been invented. Outside the town, however, it seems like everyone's got a gimmick. Devices that he didn't have the time or patience for.

"Gosh, Ford," Stan said as he continued walking beside him along the sidewalk. "People these days just don't pay attention to their surroundings with those damn phones."

"I understand your frustrations with the public and it's advancing technology, Stanley, but could you try not to attract so much attention with your needless scolding?" Ford asked, checking their surroundings for people who might be potentially looking at them. "The last thing we need is a bunch of attention in a town that we just washed up on." He then glanced over at Stan with his eyes narrowed in slight irritation. "And a state that  _you_  have gotten your name banned from," he quietly added.

"Alright, alright, I'm sorry," Stan said, acknowledging his mistake. "But I mean, c'mon. The man was standing right in the middle of the sidewalk. Like, he couldn't move a foot closer to the right to take his picture? He's gotta stand right in the middle of an active sidewalk?"

"Again, I understand your frustration and I don't blame you for it," Ford reiterated. "Just remember we need to keep a low profile while we're here. It's been several years since our last time in this town, so we aren't instant targets of suspicion. But should we become a source of constant attention, our presence may start to grow questionable in the eyes of others."

"Yeah, yeah, I hear you," Stan acknowledged. "But man, this place has changed a lot, hasn't it?"

"Yeah, it's all mostly been modernized," Ford said as he rubbed his stomach, beginning to grow hungry.

"Modernized. So that's what you call it," Stan said as he looked around the town. "In that case, I can't say I really enjoy how  _modernized_  it's all become."

"Don't let your nostalgia blind you, Stanley," Ford said as he glanced around at the various buildings as well. "You may not like the initial sight of it all, but most of these changes are done for a reason. Stores and restaurants updating in size to house more customers. Structures updated with the latest and strongest types of building materials. Bright colors to continue attracting those who find visual appeal in the place. Nothing has changed for the sake of change."

"Nothing, huh?" Stan asked, willing to test that claim. "Well, I saw that the old Mermaid Reef restaurant on the corner of Sandy Trunks Street changed its mascot to a piranha. The Piranha Reef? Where's the excuse for that change?"

"I don't know," Ford shrugged. "Maybe mermaids are outdated around here and piranhas are the new 'cool'."

"Uh-huh," Stan said sarcastically. "Well, I'm not sure you'd consider mermaids being outdated two years ago back near the Bermuda."

" _I'm_  not saying they're outdated," Ford clarified to Stan. "I'm saying maybe it's an outdated image for the town. Maybe they just want to try something new."

"So change for the sake of chan-?"

"Alright, fine. You got me," Ford gave in, rolling his eyes in slight annoyance of Stan's determination to have gotten him to admit it.

"Ha," Stan chuckled victoriously. "Ah, after all this time, getting you to admit you're wrong is still one of the best feelings."

"Glad it still satisfies you," Ford sarcastically replied. At that moment, he suddenly felt his empty stomach rumble yet again. "Ugh, damn. What time is it?"

Stan glanced around for a clock, spotting one inside a building right across the street. "Err...four o'clock, it looks like. Why?"

"I haven't eaten since this morning," Ford said as he rubbed his stomach yet again.

"Whip out a little wristwatch toast then," Stan told him.

"I'm sick of toast, Stan," Ford said, glancing down at his watch in slight consideration, but ultimately decided against it. "And I know you are too."

"Well, what are you feeling?" Stan asked. "It's not like we haven't passed a bunch of restaurants already."

"I don't know," Ford said as he thought about it. "Anything beats toast, honestly. A burger, perhaps?"

"Hmm, burgers..." Stan said as he thought of potential restaurants. "Well, the only good joint to get burgers in this town that I remember is none other than the good ol' Juke Joint herself," Stan said as he began fondly remembering the restaurant. "Still the finest burgers I've ever had to this day."

"Sounds good," Ford nodded. "But honestly, I can settle for any burger."

"Of course  _YOU_  would," Stan jabbed as he placed his arm around his shoulder and kept walking him down the sidewalk around a corner. "But luckily, you have a brother like me who won't let you settle for mediocrity when the good stuff is at the tips of our fingers." The two finished turning a corner, to which Stan's eyes immediately glanced toward something, bulging in surprise as he suddenly smiled widely. "...or in plain sight!"

Ford turned his head toward where Stan was looking and immediately noticed a sign on top of a white and red colored building that read 'The Juke Joint'. The diner was located right down the street ahead of them.

"Well, that's certainly convenient," Ford claimed with a smile.

"I can't believe it!" Stan exclaimed excitedly as he looked at the restaurant. "It's the same design and everything! It's like she hasn't aged a day!"

"It certainly stands out," Ford claimed as he analyzed the building himself. "I assume it still must be a popular spot considering they've maintained it in such condition after all these years."

"Damn right it's a popular spot!" Stan cheered as he continued walking toward it with Ford. "Glad to see that at least  _some_ of this town still has a bit of sense. I betcha this is where all the original Glass Shard folks still hang out. The kids these days probably stick to the Hermano's Tacos or the Yumberjacks," Stan claimed as he wrapped his arm around Ford's neck while they walked. "But for old folks like us? Nah. We have the Juke Joint! Kids call us the old school when really, we're the old  _cool!_ "

"Haha," Ford chuckled along with Stan's eagerness to return to his favorite diner. "I'm not too sure I want to be called the old cool either, but I suppose it will be nice to relive the feeling of 50's-themed 70's again."

"You said it, brother!" Stan said excitedly as he sped up their walking. The two reached the front door of the diner and Stan eagerly opened the door in anticipation of eating at his old favorite Glass Shard Beach diner. He enthusiastically took a few large steps inside. "50's-themed 70's, here we c-"

Before he could finish his sentence, Stan found himself freezing in place once he caught a sight of the interior of the diner. The excitement in his eyes began to fade the longer he looked around.

While the exterior of the Juke Joint appeared to display the old 50's-themed diner, the interior displayed something entirely different. Rather than a diner-sort of setting, the place appeared to have been transformed into something of a sports bar. Instead of bright red and white diner colors, the place was dark and illuminated by neon lights and multiple flatscreen televisions among the walls and hanging from corners of the building, most of them displaying the same scene of a live football game.

Additionally, there appeared to be people of different ages, mostly teens and young adults, all hanging out and having a good time. As Stan and Ford stood inside, they appeared to be some of the oldest people that were currently present at the diner. Not that people paid any attention to them, as most seemed fixated on the football game at play. A lot of people sat and stood at the main bar, enjoying and cheering for the game.

Overall, the place had virtually no right to call itself a diner, as it appeared like anything but one.

"No! NO!  _NOOOOO!_ " Stan cried out as he dropped to his knees in horror. "THEY DID IT! THEY DID IT TO THE JUKE JOINT! THEY…THEY, UH…." He pondered for a moment before glancing back at Ford. "What was that word you used earlier again?"

"Modernized?" Ford suggested.

"Right," Stan confirmed before turning his head back forward with his horrified expression again. "THEY MODERNIZED THE JUKE JOINT!  _NOOOOO!_ "

"Hey, can you keep it down, old man?" a male adult called out to him from his seat at the main bar. "We're trying to watch the game!"

At that moment, there seemed to have been a touchdown during the game on the TV and everyone at the bar cheered at once. They promptly began giving one another celebratory high fives and clinked glasses before taking long sips of their beverages.

The man that scolded Stan for his screaming had stood up from his seat jubilantly with his drink in hand as he turned to a friend of his. "HELL YEAH, MAN! GO GLASS SHARD! WOO-WOO!"

The two then decided to bump heads with one another as hard as they possibly could as some sort of celebratory gesture, but they only proceeded to knock each other out, sending their bodies falling backward to the ground with their drinks spilling in the process. Stan and Ford having watched this occurrence unfold right before their eyes.

"Charming," Ford sarcastically remarked as he stared at the two unconscious bodies.

"A bar?! Football?! Young people?!" Stan questioned as he glanced around the restaurant. "What the hell is this?!"

"Why- you're at the Juke Joint, mister!" a very short, yet sharp-looking server said as he promptly approached the two brothers.

"The Juke Joint?!" Stan questioned in disbelief. "This ain't the Juke Joint  _I_ remember! What happened to the 50's theme? Or the rollerskating waitresses? Or the actual freakin' diner?!"

The server chuckled at Stan's questions amusedly. "Sir, this place hasn't had any of that stuff in years! The original joint has long since been transformed into a normal sports bar and grill! What you see now has been the norm for the past decade!"

"Why do you still keep the original diner's exterior design though?" Ford asked the server. "If you've since modernized the inside, why not the outside?"

"Costs quite a bit for an entire exterior redesign and ain't nobody here willing to spend the time and money for it," the server explained. "Plus, it fools the old school suckas like you two into thinking this is still some 50's themed place!" the server added as he began laughing at the two.

"Why you…" Stan grumbled as he started to lift up his sleeve in preparation to start violence with the server.

"Uh-uh," the server denied with a smirk on his face as he detected Stan's growing anger. "We may not be some 50's place no more, but we're still the number one go-to bar and grill in Glass Shard. Still got the best-of-the-best burgers! You two fellas are hungry, no? Well, you lay a finga on me, and you both can go eat mediocrity at some other place because your butts won't be welcome here!" the server threatened, though he still appeared very amused. "What's it going to be?"

Stan had his eyes narrowed his eyes tightly and angrily at the server, but he gave into his game and proceeded to lower his sleeve back down. "Nice to see the Jersey way hasn't changed since we were last here."

"The Jersey way never changes, my friend," the server told Stan with a smile, before gesturing over toward two empty seats at one of the side bars. "Have a seat. Someone will be with you two shortly."

The server began to walk off, leaving the two on their own. However, Stan realized one final question he could potentially ask the man.

"Hey, shorty!" he called out, grabbing the server's attention once more. "For a Juke Joint, do you, at the very least, still have the jukebox?"

"Of course, my friend! We ain't  _that_  misleading!" the server nodded as he pointed out a spot right behind the two. "It's...err...right in that corner over there!"

The two glanced over at the corner the server pointed to. There, they spot an old, rusty jukebox that was clearly unused and possibly not even functional. Thematically, it was the most retro appearing object in the entire building, as everything that surrounded it was all modern.

"Well, that's just pathetic," Stan claimed as he stared at the jukebox. "And somewhat heartbreaking."

Stan then proceeded to walk over to one of the two seats that the server originally offered them and sat down. Ford raised an eyebrow at this as he caught up and sat beside him.

"So what?" Ford asked him. "We're actually going to eat here and give into that man's manipulative business principles?"

"Have you forgotten, Sixer?" Stan asked back. "This is how Jersey businessmen are. They're manipulative, greedy people who don't care what they gotta do to make a buck." He then gave Ford a look. "Doesn't that remind you of someone you know? Some else who grew up here?"

"Yes, well…" Ford said as he processed Stan's words, before realizing who he was referring to. "...oh…"

"Uh-huh," Stan nodded, confirming his realization. "Besides, we ain't gonna be here much longer than a day anyway. Just order yourself something and relax."

A pimpled young adult waiter suddenly appeared from behind the bar and stepped across the counter in front of the two brothers. "Hello, my name is Logan. I'll be your waiter today. May I start you both off with anything to drink?"

"Um, we'll just take some waters," Ford replied as he quickly opened the menu that had already sat in front of them. "But I think we're ready to order already," he said as he looked over at Stan, who nodded in agreement with his readiness to order.

"Okay, no problem," Logan stated as he took out a little notepad. "What'll it be?"

"We'll just have two Sailor Bacon Cheeseburgers," Ford told him.

"Actually, just normal Sailor Cheeseburgers," Stan corrected. "My niece has a pet pig and she'll never let me hear the end of it if she finds out about this."

"I mean...is she here right now?" Logan asked, somewhat confused by this information.

"No."

"Then why don't you just…"

"You don't know my niece, kid," Stan cut off. "Trust me. She has her ways."

Logan gave Stan an odd look for a good minute before he reverted his eyes back to his notepad to finish writing the order. " _Ooookay…_ " he said before popping open a cash register right beside him. "Your total is $19.65."

"You require pay before serving?" Stan asked, raising an eyebrow at this practice.

"Well, it is Jersey," the man said as he rubbed his nose. "Gotta do something to prevent the runners."

"Crap!" Ford's eyes then bulged as he came to a sudden realization. He leaned over to Stan and turned him away from the waiter. "Stan, all of our money was left in our backpacks on the boat!"

"So you're saying we got nothing?!" Stan asked.

Ford checked the pockets of his jeans and pulled out a few coins. "I do have some spare change in my pocket."

"Spare change ain't gonna pay for $19.65 worth of burgers, Ford!" Stan scolded loud enough for Logan to overhear.

"Is there a problem?" Logan asked the two.

"No! No problems here!" Stan assured him as they turned back toward him. "We're just getting that money for you and…" he began before suddenly pointing off in a direction behind Logan. "Hey, look at that distraction over there!"

Despite Stan's more than obvious attempt at a distraction, Logan promptly took the bait and turned around on command. "Where?"

As soon as Logan turned around, Stan promptly shoved a small tray that sat on the counter containing napkins, salt, pepper, and condiments right off the counter onto Logan's side. The tray and all its objects fell onto the ground, which prompted Logan to turn back around.

"Oh no!" Stan exclaimed, pretending to appear shocked. "It looks like your stuff dropped!"

Logan looked down at the ground and saw all the fallen items, before slumping dejectedly. "Aw man, my stuff."

He proceeded to bend down and start picking up all the items to place back on the tray. While he did this, Stan stood up and leaned over the counter to grab a fistful of cash from the open register, assuming that no one else was looking at him. He then sat back down with the cash in hand and counted it up in his head.

Ford noticed the large amount of cash Stan had obtained and how the amount was much more than they needed to pay for the meal. "Geez, Stan. We only needed a twenty."

"I know," Stan nodded. He then separated a twenty dollar bill in his hand before proceeding to greedily stuff the rest inside his jacket, something that Ford frowned upon, but wasn't surprised by. Logan stood back up and placed the tray with all the dropped items back on the counter. Stan then proceeded to casually hand him the twenty as if he had it waiting all this time. "Here you go, son. Keep the change, buy yourself something nice."

Logan raised an eyebrow at Stan. "What can I do with 45 cents?"

"I don't know. Buy a gumball?" Stan suggested. "Why are you asking me? It's your money now. Go figure that out yourself."

Logan proceeded to complete the transaction as he maintained an odd look that he continued to give Stan before walking off with their order in his hands.

Stan sighed as soon as he saw he was gone. "Complaining about forty-five cents…" he grumbled. "When I was his age, I woulda killed for forty-five cents. These current-day millennials. They'll never understand how it was." He sighed sadly as he placed his hand under his head, arm leaned on the counter. "God, how I miss the old Joint."

"Well, on the bright side, it didn't look like the menu had changed much at all since the old days," Ford claimed, trying to point out the bright spot.

"True, but who knows? Might not even taste the same," Stan said, still skeptical. "Did you know that people nowadays are trying to make meat that ain't even meat? Artificial meat I think they call it."

Ford snorted in amusement upon learning of this technological advancement. "Please. People in this dimension are only  _now_ figuring out how to do that?"

"Ah, get the hell outta here with your advanced interdimensional smartness," Stan told him. "My point is, it ain't real meat. At least not in my eyes. Like seriously. Who's asking for this crap?"

"Vegetarians, Stan," Ford reminded him. "And people who are just generally against the whole process of eating meat from animals. Cruelty and such."

"True," Stan came to terms with. "Maybe that's the real reason Carla left me. Why date a selfish jerk who eats burgers when she can share her vegan lifestyle with none other than a hippie? Of all the people…"

"Ladies and gentlemen," a voice suddenly emerged over a speaker.

Stan, Ford, and most people in the restaurant then turned their heads toward the direction the sound came from. Everyone's eyes were soon fixated on a small stage in the corner of the room. There, the short server stood at a mic stand.

"It's another Wednesday afternoon," he announced. "That means it's time for another afternoon of dimensional healing with the man himself- please welcome back our good friend and musician, Mr. Thistle Downe!"

At that moment, the server stood aside from the stage as an elderly man with a strong hippie get-up promptly stood on stage with his guitar. "Hello there, peacemakers!"

The people of the restaurant suddenly went wild for Thistle, giving him a round of applause as he stood on stage. Stan, on the other hand, stared at Thistle in disbelief.

"Speaking of hippies…" Stan said as his eye began to twitch at the mere sight of Thistle.

"Who here is ready to let their spirits loose with some dimensional healing?" Thistle asked the audience in a calm, soothing voice as he promptly sat on a small wooden stool and tuned his guitar. The question had the restaurant cheering more for him. "That's what I'm talking about."

He began strumming his guitar, playing a very psychedelic and odd chord progression. But the entire bar still went crazy as he played, which seemed to imply he was doing just fine.

Ford glanced over at Stan with a look of concern, aware of his former association with Thistle. He could easily see how furious Stan was becoming by the sight and sound of his old rival after all these years. "Stan…?"

Stan slammed his fist on the counter in frustration. "I can't believe this! They modernize the hell outta this joint because it's old school, yet they still bring this high school girlfriend-stealing tree-hugger around to play music? What kinda crap is that?!" He then began to stand up from his seat at the bar. "Why I oughta…"

"Stan, please," Ford pleaded as he pulled his brother back down to his seat. "This is no time to start a scene!"

"Do you even remember what that peace-sign loving prick did to me, Ford?" Stan exclaimed in a quiet manner to not distract others from Thistle's performance.

"Look, I understand you still hold resentment toward Thistle for taking your high school love away from you, but Stan, that was over thirty years ago!" Ford told him. "Besides, you already crashed the man's car! What the hell do you wanna do to him now, after all these years? Kill him?"

"Good God, Ford! No!" Stan exclaimed, shocked by this assumption. "Who do you think I am? I was thinking more along the lines of letting him know I'm still around and that he better watch out. Ya know, sorta like a warning."

"Well I strongly urge against that notion," Ford told him. "You don't have anything left to prove to him. Aside from letting him and others know that you're still alive and potentially blowing our cover, there's no good reason to do this that will benefit you or us." He then put his hand on his brother's shoulder. "C'mon, Stanley. It's been over thirty years. You can let this go, can't you?"

Stan looked down to the side for a moment. "Yeah, I guess," he nodded in agreement. "Crashing the car was enough to drive Carla further away in the first place. If she were to somehow find out I was still at it with Thistle over thirty years later, I don't know what she'd think of me."

"Well, for starters, she'd be shocked you're even alive," Ford joked.

"True," Stan nodded with a slight smile. He then stood up from his seat. "Anyway, if I'm not gonna get up to distract Thistle, then I might as well get up to use the can."

Ford nodded as he watched his brother leave his seat behind and walk off. He then turned back in his seat, to which he saw Logan approach the diner and drop off the two waters they had ordered. He thanked him as he took his glass and took a long sip.

It was his first sip of normal, purified freshwater in a little over four days and he enjoyed it. He could already feel the water moisturizing his mostly dried up insides. He stopped drinking and took a second to exhale, feeling his hydration replenish. The simple sip of water already started to make him feel like he could see better, think better, and generally breathe better. All it took was a sip from a glass of cold water. Never again would he undervalue such a pivotal nature.

He mentally marked down a water purifier as another feature to add to the final version of Meridian upon getting home. Or perhaps a purified water dispenser. Or both.

Probably both.

He then looked down at his wrist and the saw little Snacken still wrapped around it. "How are you doing, little fella?"

It stared up at him as he held the water in his hand. He realized that the Snacken had probably spent a lot of time in the ocean alongside its mother, covered in saltwater. It must've been thirsty for normal freshwater as well.

"Do you...erm...want a drink?" Ford asked it, gesturing toward the glass in his other hand.

The Snacken just continued to stare back at him. Snackens didn't talk, so he didn't know what he was expecting when he asked it that. But he simply figured it might've been thirsty anyway. He looked around him, making sure no one was looking at him talking to a little octopus wrapped around his hand. Assuming he wasn't being watched, he slowly poured a little bit of the cold water on the Snacken itself, not knowing another way to deliver it. He couldn't tell if it was drinking it because its mouth was right on his hand, but the fact it wasn't responding negatively seemed like a good indicator.

"I'm going to assume you're enjoying that," Ford told it.

He placed his glass back down and turned his head back toward Thistle and his performance. Unlike Stan, he didn't have anything personally against the man. He didn't respect him for taking away someone that his brother truly cared about back in high school, but he didn't hold the same hatred for him as his brother. Therefore he was able to more easily acknowledge that Thistle was a talented musician in his age.

Certainly, psychedelic, hippie folk or whatever it's called wasn't his personal taste, but the way he played his guitar seemed more than just passable. And of course, the fact that the rest of the restaurant was actively listening to him instead of booing and disregarding him like the Jersey people he knew must've meant he was doing something right.

Thistle put his mouth up to the microphone as he played. "I call this piece- Grazing the Land."

"More like Grating and Bland!" a voice yelled out from around the front of the stage.

Eyes turned toward the direction of the voice, including Thistle's and Ford's. They all landed on Stan, who was standing right beside the stage with a smug look on his face.

"Stanley?!" Ford whispered to himself in nervous confusion to what his brother was doing.

"Dude," Thistle said, placing his hand over the strings of his guitar, muting them as he looked over at Stan disapprovingly. "That's so not cool."

"Oh yeah?" Stan questioned as he made himself appear more visible to the rest of the bar beside the stage. "You wanna know what else isn't cool? Still talking like you're thirteen when you're in your late sixties!"

"OOH!" cried the voices of a few people around the bar, accompanied by some audible chuckling in response to Stan's insult.

"C'mon, brother. Where's your soul?" Thistle asked Stan in a passive tone. "I'm just trying to play mine for the good Jersey people."

"My soul?" Stan asked, raising an eyebrow. "My soul is in the body of another man in his late sixties. But I find better music in his awfully rough and grating voice over your amateur fingerpicking on an instrument that's, at the very least, less likely to give someone a migraine when looking at it than whatever you're wearing."

People throughout the restaurant burst out laughing in response to this. Ford wasn't one of those people, maintaining a look of nervousness and skepticism for Stan's actions.

"Also, did you just say you're playing your soul?" Stan asked with a chuckle. "I'm sorry, 'brother', but l believe that thing is called a  _guitar_. Man, no wonder you sound terrible. If you don't even know the name of the instrument you're playing, then you're just bound to not know anything else!"

The people around the bar kept laughing at Stan's insults, with Stan himself was laughing along with them. Thistle narrowed his eyes at Stan but then began to scan his appearance, finding him slightly familiar.

"Stanley Pines?" Thistle asked into the microphone.

The mention of his name instantly prompted Stan to shut up, wiping the smile clean off his face. He glanced around the room nervously as he felt his heart sink. As the room quieted down from the laughter too, Ford could also feel his own heart sink.

"Um, no," Stan said simply with sweat beginning to drip down his face.

"It  _is_  you!" Thistle exclaimed after a moment of analyzing his appearance as he smiled. "Haha! I thought your face looked familiar."

Stan scoffed. "Familiar?" he said, trying to pretend he didn't know what Thistle was talking about. "What do you mean? I've never seen you before in my life."

"Ah, don't play those games, Stanley," Thistle said, not buying into his shtick. "I know it's you. Never could I have ever guessed I'd be seeing you again after all these years. Part of the reason being that you've been a dead man for most of them," he jabbed. "But hey, at least we know now that coming back from the dead gives you the ability to make jokes!"

"Please," Stan said with an eye-roll. "I've always known how to make jokes."

"Oh, you're right," Thistle said as he stood up from his seat and placed his guitar down. "I remember this really funny one in particular. The one where you broke your brother's science fair project and ruined his entire future, which ended up with you getting kicked out of your parents' house!"

There was yet another wave of OH's around the restaurant, following by a bunch of laughter. It may have been mean to laugh at Stan's past, although it was somewhat warranted after Stan's shots at Thistle. Suddenly insulting him the way he did was just asking for a roast of his own.

"Oh, and the time you became a failed salesman with your Scam Total!" Thistle added.

"The  _Sham_  Total!" Stan corrected angrily, clenching his fist.

"Oh, so you  _WERE_  serious about that name. I guess you dropped out of school before you learned the English lesson on irony," Thistle joked further, causing the audience to break out into another round of laughter.

Stan just stood there silently as he took the shots from Thistle and the people's laughter. One might feel embarrassed in his shoes, but he didn't. Rather, he was growing somewhat angry by Thistle's cruel mention of his past, which he's long since overcome. That doesn't mean it still didn't sting.

"And you know, when I heard about the car crash that supposedly ended your life, I actually felt bad for you," Thistle admitted. "That's saying something, right? Me feeling bad for the guy who crashed my car? I feel like that says a lot." Thistle took the microphone off the stand and made his way off the stage over to Stan. "But then you come into this bar and disrupt my performance and start making fun of me in front of my people. My spirits. And so you think I'll feel remorse for a man who hasn't changed at all?"

"NO!" a lot of customers shouted as an answer for him.

"Exactly," Thistle nodded in agreement before turning back to Stan. "I don't feel bad for anything anymore, Stanley. Not your past. Not your 'death'. Not anything," he listed before smirking. "Not even Carla."

Stan's eyes bulged at this and he snapped. He promptly clenched his fist tightly and without warning or hesitation, he lunged and punched Thistle right in the face, hard enough to knock him off the stage. This prompted customers around the restaurant to gasp in shock, including Ford.

Thistle fell off the stage on his back. Still conscious, he put a hand on his face where he was punched. It was a punch hard enough to leave a bright red mark and cause his nose to start bleeding. He then looked back up at Stan, who began marching his way back toward him. He quickly stood up from the ground and began frantically backing up away from him.

"How  _DARE_ you!" Stan yelled at Thistle as he kept making his way over to him.

People throughout the restaurant stood out of the way of the two, mostly trying to stay out of the debacle between the two. Some customers attempted to restrain Stan for his actions, but he quickly pushed them away without much effort.

"THAT'S ENOUGH, STAN!" Ford exclaimed as he jumped behind his brother and grabbed his arm, pulling him back. "What has gotten into you?!"

"This doesn't CONCERN you, Six-Fingers!" Stan yelled at him, putting his other hand on his face before pushing him back against a counter.

Ford's back violently collided with the counter, hurting him. However, he was confused. The action and Stan's words didn't mesh well with the Stan he knew. "Six-Fingers?" he quietly wondered to himself. "What the hell…?"

Thistle kept backing up nervously away from Stan. "Look, Stanley. I'm just an old man who advocates strongly for peace. W-we don't need to do this!"

"For a man of peace, you sure know how to make a man angry," Stan claimed, not buying into his reasoning. "From stealing a young man's love to stealing that same man's pride over forty years later." He kept getting closer and closer to Thistle, which continued to intimidate him. "You don't know what that woman meant to me. She was the closest to I've ever had to a real love. And that's saying something because I've been married twice! Neither of them lasted longer than a few hours. And they both just wanted money. And one was literally a coin machine," Stan said as he thought back to Goldie. "Anyways, I'm getting off track. My point is, Carla was as real as you could get. And it's because of YOU that I lost her!"

"Look, Carla and I haven't been a thing in forever!" Thistle revealed. "She broke it off shortly after we heard about your death. She left the state and I haven't spoken to her since! She ain't gonna hear about any of this!"

Stan then grabbed Thistle by the throat with one of his hands, choking him violently. The white in his eyes flickered a very light yellow for a second as he then grinned at Thistle maliciously. "Good."

"STANLEY!" Ford shouted as he reached his hand out to him. "NO!"

Ignoring his pleas, Stan placed his other hand on Thistle's shoulder and forced his body down so his knee would make contact with his face. The violent hit sent Thistle recoiling back a bit until Stan grabbed him by the neck once again. He then ran up to the large glass window beside the front door and promptly threw him at it from a few feet away. Still, his strength sent Thistle flying until he crashed right through the window, shattering the glass. His body then collided with the sidewalk concrete before tumbling against the wheel of a car parked outside.

After a moment of shock, everyone's eyes turned to look at Stan, each with looks of pure horror. Stan stood breathing heavily for a brief moment until he stood up straight. His pupils then quickly dilated and constricted before returning to normal size. He looked around the room at the people staring at him and raised an eyebrow.

"What are you people looking at?" Stan asked as he noticed he was standing in the middle of the restaurant. "Why am I standing here? I thought I was on my way to the bathroom."

People throughout the restaurant then started to exit the building and run away in fear for their lives. Stan just watched them all in confusion, but he was starting to feel somewhat nervous due to not having a clue of what was happening.

"What the hell's going on?" Stan asked, looking around at the people quickly leaving.

"DAMMIT, STANLEY!" Ford shouted as he suddenly walked up to Stan and grabbed him by the collar angrily. "WHAT'S GOTTEN INTO YOU?! YOU KNOW HOW MUCH TROUBLE YOU'VE JUST GOTTEN US IN?"

"ME?! Trouble?!" Stan asked. "Ford, I don't even know what the hell just happened!"

"YOU JUST THREW THISTLE DOWNE THROUGH A WINDOW, YA KNUCKLEHEAD!" Ford scolded as he pointed through the shattered window.

Being told this, Stan's eyes glanced outside in disbelief. Right against a car, he saw Thistle's body lying outside surrounded by civilians attempting to assist him. He was bloodied, his entire body knicked and marked from glass shards and his face was badly bruised. He was still conscious, but appeared very weak and beaten. The civilians appeared to be trying to keep him awake, while some others were on their phones, presumably trying to contact medical attention or other assistance.

Stan was being told that he was the one who did this, but he couldn't remember doing such a thing. One second, he was telling Ford he had to use the bathroom and the next, he had apparently beaten up and severely injured Thistle Downe for some reason. He had no recollection of any in between events besides a mix of angry and saddened emotions, but he couldn't remember what they were from or what prompted them.

"I...I did?!" Stan asked as he continued looking at Thistle through the shattered window frame. "I...I couldn't have! That's impossible!"

"You just did it, Stanley!" Ford told him, not believing his claims. "I saw it! The entire restaurant saw it! How can you go ahead and say that you didn't?!"

"I don't remember doing it! I really don't!" Stan tried to tell him. "Why would I hurt Thistle like that?!"

Before Ford could answer, he heard something behind him. He turned his head and looked back at the short server they met earlier talking on a telephone.

"Yeah, some goon came in and threw our weekly performer through a window," the server explained, presumably to the police. He glanced over at the twins standing and made a quick note of them before turning back. "Yes, he's still here. And he's got an accomplice. They look similar, so I think they're brothers. Maybe even twins. That's how similar they look," he said, his tone starting to sound a bit more impatient and anxious. "Look, how soon are ya gonna be here?"

Ford's eyes bulged at this and his head turned back to Stan, who had his face in his hands, looking around in disbelief on the current situation.

"This isn't happening," Stan told himself quietly. "This  _ISN'T_ happening. There's no way…"

Ford grabbed Stan's arm and pulled him along as he started making a run for the exit. "C'mon. The police are gonna be coming. We gotta get the hell out of here."

Ford jumped through the shattered window frame and let go of Stan's arm, beginning to make a run for it on his own, expecting Stan to follow. Stan, however, stood at the window and stared down at the injured Thistle. He looked on at his injuries in horror, still in disbelief that he'd do such a thing to him. Despite his past with Thistle, he knew he didn't deserve this. Stealing his girlfriend was no excuse to nearly kill him, no matter how angry he might've made him.

_Why would I do this? WHY would I do this?!_

A woman who was crouched down to aid Thistle looked up and noticed Stan. She narrowed her eyes at him. "YOU MONSTER!" she exclaimed at him. "WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU?!"

The rest of the people helping Thistle then glanced over at Stan and started angrily yelling things at him as well. Stan's look of horror then changed to one of guilt as he looked at the people.

"WHAT DID HE DO TO DESERVE THIS?!" one bystander shouted.

"THE MAN'S AN ARTIST!" another shouted.

"WHAT ARE YOU?!" another questioned. "SOME KIND OF DEMON?!"

"I'm...I'm sorry," Stan said under their yelling, which didn't stop them. "I...don't know why I'd do such a thing. I really don't."

Thistle's head on the ground slowly and weakly turned to look over at Stan, who looked down at him. The two made direct eye contact with one another. This contact was haunting to Stan, and he had begun to tune out the yelling and berating of the bystanders. Stan didn't know what to say, but he saw that Thistle was clearly angry at him.

"STANLEY!" Ford's voice called out to Stan from across the street, having noticed that Stan hadn't been following him. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! WE NEED TO GO!"

Stan glanced back and forth between Ford and Thistle once before he quickly began running to catch up to his brother, running past a bunch of other civilians on the street who looked upon the incident in confusion. As he ran up beside Ford, they began to hear faint sirens in the near distance.

" _STANLEY PINES!_ " Thistle Downe cried out angrily with his eyes shut tightly. His scream was loud enough to echo around the entire block. "YOU WON'T GET AWAY WITH THIS! SOON, YOU'LL BE A DEAD MAN FOR REAL!"

Stan and Ford turned into an alleyway as the volume of the sirens began to increase due to their nearing distance. They kept on running, but they were still able to hear one final cry from Thistle Downe.

"JUST LIKE  _YOUR FATHER!_ "

A revelation that was loud and clear.

 


	23. Those Old Jersey Shores: Part 3

About half an hour had passed since the incident at The Juke Joint. Since then, a wave of heavy rain showers began to roll in over the Glass Shard Beach area. At the Joint, there were police to investigate the situation and paramedics to assist Thistle Downe. The showers made things difficult for everyone, but it didn't stop a local news team from setting up and preparing a shot of the scene either.

A female reporter in a raincoat stood in front of a news camera with a microphone in hand; a view of the destroyed glass window of the restaurant in the background.

"Yes, Steve, we're currently live on the scene where, half an hour ago, a man at The Juke Joint Bar and Grill threw another man through a window, absolutely decimating the glass and severely injuring the man," the reporter went on to explain, speaking to the people at the news station over the com. She moved over to the ambulance where Thistle was about to be loaded inside on his cot, the camera following her. "The man's name is Thistle Downe, a local musician for the Juke Joint, and he's with us right now." She looked over at Thistle. "Mr. Downe, what exactly happened here? Can you describe the incident at all?"

"You see, I was just playing my normal Wednesday afternoon gig here at the Joint," Thistle began to explain into the microphone he was handed. "All's going well at first until this male spirit comes up beside my stage and starts making fun of me! I'm like 'Who does this dude think he is?' and I look over at him. It takes me a minute, but then I recognize him. And he ain't no ordinary dude. He's a dead man walking, lady."

"What do you mean?" the reporter asked, raising an eyebrow.

"The dude that did this to me is a formerly dead man by the name Stanley Pines," Thistle revealed. "An old local who got banned from the state several years ago for selling his own cheap products to the good spirits of our country. The same Stan who supposedly died in a car crash in 1984."

"You're saying that Stan Pines actually isn't dead and has returned to New Jersey?" the reporter asked.

"That's about right," Thistle nodded as he laid in his cot. "And I ain't done anything to him. He just got mad and punched me off my stage, then threw me through that window. Spirits these days just ain't getting kinder. But what else can you expect from one that just came back from the dead?"

The reporter backed away from Thistle as paramedics began to load him into the back of the ambulance. She glanced back at the camera. "Well, it appears we have a claim that Stan Pines may actually be  _alive_ and has returned to the state of New Jersey and is possibly at large here at Glass Shard Beach. I'll throw this back to you, Steve. I'm Kate Baron, Jersey News."

On the news channel itself, there was a cut back to the news station where a man sat at the news desk with a paper in hand.

"Thanks, Kate. We just got some more information on Stan Pines for those who are unaware of him," the newscaster said as he glanced down at his paper. "He was most infamous in New Jersey for his Sham Total product as part of his StanCo Enterprises. The Sham Total reportedly used a cheap blue dye that worsened stains of the items it was advertised to clean. Since then, he's been outlawed from the state of New Jersey. He has been reported to keep up these various actions inside and outside of the states under various fake identities, going to prison multiple times until his reported death in a flaming car crash in 1984."

Old civilian footage of Stan running and being chased by mobs from his various businesses under his multiple identities began to play onscreen of the news broadcast.

"Stan Pines grew up in Glass Shard Beach alongside his mother, father, and two brothers," the newscaster read over the playing footage. "Most recently, his father, Filbrick Pines, former owner of Pines Pawns pawn shop, passed away February 16th last year." The footage ended and the camera pointed back toward the newscaster. "We don't have confirmation if Thistle's assault was, in fact, Stan Pines as he says, but we have local Glass Shard police investigating the situation. We'll have continuous updates as the week goes. With this news of Thistle, however, we encourage everyone to watch themselves in public. And if you believe you've spotted Stan Pines, we urge you to contact authorities immediately."

* * *

As news spread through town about Stan's potential presence through New Jersey, police had already begun searching around the town for him. Using security camera footage from the Juke Joint provided by the manager, police were able to examine the incident itself and get a rough idea of Stan's appearance. They were also able to see Ford working alongside him and took him as an accomplice. The restaurant's server had informed them of this already, even adding that they appeared similar in appearance, as though they were twins.

With this info, the patrol cars searched through the rain for two similar appearing men with outfits reminiscent of the ones the men wore in the footage. The rain made the search fairly difficult, but no matter what, they were still determined to locate the man responsible for the Juke Joint incident.

As a patrol car passed an alley, a man wearing a trench coat stepped out from the alley and walked over to the edge of a wall to view the passing car. As he looked on, the cruiser promptly drove out of sight and around the corner of the street. The man then turned back into the alley and made a gesture towards someone else, letting them know to come along. The two then took to the sidewalks in the open rain, keeping their heads down in their dirty trench coats and matching hats.

The rain must have driven most people back inside and off the streets. There were very few pedestrians and hardly anyone driving either. Prior to the first bit of drizzle, the streets were populated by Jersey folk and tourists, but now, the streets were practically empty and almost lonely.

Still, Stan and Ford trudged through. To conceal themselves from the police, they had snagged a pair of dirtied and ripped up trench coats and hats from a dumpster in one of the alleys they had walked through prior. With what happened back at the joint, the two had managed to become targets to the police and anyone who had already watched the news. Despite the target, they stayed in New Jersey for a reason. So as long as they can hide from police detection, they'll continue on their way toward their next destination- so they could figure out the truth.

They turned the corner of a street and walked through an open metal gate. Soon enough, they found themselves trudging the muddy grass of Glass Shard's open cemetery. With brief directions from a worker, they walked toward one of the corners of the graveyard. Eventually, they found what they were searching for.

"There it is, Stanley," Ford said as the two laid their eyes on the gravestone of their father, Filbrick Pines.

Hearing that their father had died wasn't quite a pleasant revelation, but it was one that wasn't quite confirmed to them. Not until they saw it themselves. It was still an idea that distressed them just thinking about it, and one that they somewhat believed despite not knowing for sure yet. But upon the sight of the grave, it felt like they had suddenly been injected with something to weaken the two. They felt lightheaded and their legs felt as though they were on the brink of giving up.

Yet still, they were strong enough to keep standing.

The revelation still hit hard though. Their dad was now a figure that they now had no choice but to only remember. The father that they had spent their entire childhoods and most of their teen years with was now dead. A death that happened over a year ago and they were only just finding out about it.

Ford started to break, with tears beginning to run down from his eyes despite his efforts to try to push them back. He took off his glasses and wiped them off with his sleeve as he sniffled and cried. He didn't want to have a complete meltdown and was able to reserve himself, but the moment was still too much for him to not shed at least a bit of emotion.

"I can't say I can't believe he's gone," Ford said through his tears and sniffles. "But I can't believe we were never there to give one last, proper farewell. Even if he would've hated to see us again, it would've given more closure to everything that we've gone through," he said as he wiped a few more tears from his face and put his glasses back on. "Well, more closure than  _this_ , that is."

Ford then crouched down and got his knee to examine the grave more personally. In his head, he kept reading off the name 'Filbrick Pines' on the tombstone, which was the thing that hurt most.

The name.

His father's name.

 _His_  name.

Reading it gave him such a pain in his chest that one might confuse for a heart attack. The name just hurt him to read and acknowledge despite knowing very well that it was all true.

He took a deep breath, holding it for a moment, before shakily exhaling. "I haven't seen you in so,  _so_  long, dad," he said emotionally as he placed his hand on the tombstone as if he was reaching out to touch his father. "We've had our fair share of difficult interactions growing up. Hell, we had one the very last time we spoke with one another."

* * *

"C'mon, dad! You have to know where he is!"

"I already told ya, Stanford. He's not under my watch anymore. And he hasn't been for years. I thought you knew this well by now."

A young, sleep-deprived, and scruffy-looking Stanford paced around the room as far as his house phone cord would let him.

The past few days have been rough, considering he had just learned a terrible truth in regards to who he once considered his muse and his friend. He was in a state of extreme paranoia and felt like he was being watched. On top of that, he lost a real friend within the whole ordeal.

Now he had almost nobody left to turn to in a situation where he needed someone to trust most.

Almost nobody.

"That's not true, dad. I know you know where he is," Ford told him. "You're his father too!"

"And you're his brother!" Filbrick exclaimed back. "If you don't know, then what makes you think that I know? And besides, he's no son of mine anymore."

"Oh my God…" Ford sighed exasperatedly as he leaned his forehead against a wall in frustration.

"Why do you even wanna know where that knucklehead is so badly?" Filbrick asked. "Have you forgotten what he did to you? He ruined your future, Stanford! I don't care that you're living it up in the woods of Oregon! If it weren't for that so-called brother of yours, you could've been living in millions!"

" _I_  wanted to come here, dad! This was  _my_  choice!" Ford exclaimed. "It may not be millions, but I'm doing more than fine enough!"

"Then why on God's name do you want anything to do with  _him?_ "

"Because I  _NEED_  him!" Ford exclaimed angrily. "I  _need_  him, dad! You may want anything to do with him anymore, but this isn't about you. This is about  _me_  asking where he is. Now can you please be a good, caring father  _for once_  and just tell me?"

Ford sat in silence for a few seconds, waiting for a response from his dad. The lack of any sort of response was beginning to make him believe he had hung up.

"Hello?" Ford asked, breaking the silence.

"Tell me, Stanford," Filbrick finally responded. "Why do you think I know where that clown is after all these years?"

Ford was getting annoyed with having to explain this to him. "Because I know you do, dad! You say you disowned him but you still keep tabs on him. You're his dad! As much as you don't want to admit it, you've been keeping up with every movement he makes. You may not care about him or want anything to do with him anymore, but you've still been watching! And so I know you know where he is and where he's been! I just need you to tell me!"

Ford waited for a response but was left in another brief silence.

"Dad,  _PLEASE!_ " Ford pleaded as he physically shook his phone. He placed it up to his ear again and awaited a response, but still received nothing. He sighed disappointedly. "Well, thanks for everything, dad."

"New Mexico."

Ford halted from putting the phone back on the base as he heard his father's voice come from the speaker. He quickly put it back up to his ear. "What? What was that?"

"005 Dead End Flats, New Mexico," Filbrick said. "He attempted to use the credit card I used to manage for him before he left. It doesn't work anymore, but I still get notified whenever and from wherever he tries to squeeze some money out of it for his troubles."

"New Mexico…?" Ford asked as he wondered what his brother was possibly doing there.

"He moves around a lot, so if you're trying to contact him, you better do it fast," Filbrick said nonchalantly.

"Yeah...I got it," Ford told him. "Um...thanks, dad. Really." He waited a second for any sort of reply such as a 'You're welcome' or 'No problem', but received nothing. "Uh...say hello to mom for me."

"Just be careful, Stanford," Filbrick replied finally.

Ford then heard an immediate click followed by the dial tone, signifying that Filbrick had hung up. It was a very sudden hang-up and one that he didn't expect from him. His father was never an easy man to talk to, but this had been one of the toughest phone calls he's ever had with him.

But still, he managed to come through.

* * *

"Oh, God," Ford said as he placed his hands over his face tearfully. "How I wish that wasn't the last exchange we'd ever make with one another." He placed his hand back on the tombstone and stroked it, leaving a slightly damp trail behind on the stone due to his tear-moistened hands. "You were a tough man, dad. One who was hard to impress. If only you saw what I've accomplished since then- what I've done; where I've been; what I've seen. The money may not have impressed you, but I know the sights would have." He removed his hand from the tombstone and just stared at it. "Cold you were, but heartless you weren't. You were still a father. And you won't be forgotten. Farewell, dad."

He wiped a final tear from his eye as he stood up from the ground. He adjusted his glasses and looked down at the grave silently. While he was still grieving, he had come to terms with his dad's passing. There was nothing he could do anymore, and so all he could do was just accept it and, in time, move on.

From the inside of his trench coat, the baby Snacken crept out and crawled down his legs. It leaped off his foot and landed on the dirt of the grave. It examined the surface before crawling on to the tombstone itself, climbing it until it perched itself on the left corner of it. It looked down sadly as if it understood the circumstances in place.

Ford looked at it and wanted to smile, but he was far too dejected to do so. He simply just acknowledged its presence before leaning over to pick it back up with his hand. As it latched itself back to his wrist, he sighed sadly.

"Is there anything you want to say, Stanley?" Ford asked his brother as he shut his eyes grievingly.

There was a brief silence as he waited for a reply, which prompted him to turn over to him. He then noticed that Stan was just staring at their dad's grave. Unlike him, he wasn't shedding off the same amount of emotion. His face and eyes appeared dry, but his general expression displayed a similar state of grief and sorrow.

"What should I say?" Stan asked Ford, glancing over at him.

"I don't know. Something respectful?" Ford asked, somewhat thrown off by this question. "Something nice?"

"Dad's never been the nicest guy to me," Stan replied.

"Well, I don't know, Stan," Ford shrugged. "I can't speak for you. These are your words for him. Not mine."

"I just don't know, Ford," Stan admitted. "Things between the old man and I have always been too complicated for proper words. He's been tough on both of us growing up, but he was always  _especially_  tougher on me."

* * *

Stood in the center of the room, a young Stan stood dripping wet in the center of his living room, sobbing as he held out a single tooth in the palm of his hand. As he sobbed, his mouth hung open, allowing for a clear view of the new bloody gap located around the middle of the front of his top set of teeth. He held it out to his two parents, who sat together on the couch right in front of him.

"So what if that Crampelter kid knocked out a tooth?" Filbrick Pines asked as he looked on at his son's tooth in his hand without pity. He rose from his seat and shook his fist aggressively as an example. "You shoulda hit him back and knocked out five of  _his!_ "

Only minutes prior, Stan found himself running through the heavy rain after yet another encounter with Crampelter and his friends. As always, they showed up just to sour his mood and day. The encounter ended with Crampelter chucking a soccer ball violently at the side of his face, knicking the side of his glasses and knocking one of his baby teeth in. Outnumbered, hurt, and upset, he decided to just run back home. Along the way, the tooth that was knocked it fell out of place, leaving him with his gap. Freaked out and upset over the whole incident, he was hoping his parents might be able to help him.

However, his dad clearly wasn't being too helpful.

"But it hurt!" Stan tried to reason through his tears.

"Ah, you little wuss," Filbrick said disappointedly as he sat back down and carelessly grabbed a newspaper from the coffee table.

"Filly!" Ma exclaimed angrily, narrowing her eyes at her husband for his response.

That already did it for Stan. He clenched the tooth in his hand as he ran off to his room, whimpering tearfully in pain and sadness.

Ma then stood up from her seat and looked down at her husband angrily. "For Pete's sake, Filly! He's only nine!" She then walked away from him to go after Stan.

"He's going to be ten soon!" Filbrick reminded her as she walked off. "No son of mine that old would ever let himself get bullied or run from a fight!"

As she left his sight, he sighed, knowing she was going to go try and cheer him up as she always did. He was tired of his kids being unable to fend for themselves out in the world. Too many times they'd return home crying and asking for help and defense from the outside, which he knew they could easily overcome if they just stuck their neck out and fought back rather than give up. He didn't want the kids to go and hurt themselves, but rather know what to do if they did get hurt.

He pondered ways he may be able to accomplish this until he flipped his newspaper to a certain page. In the center, there read an advertisement for Summer Boxing Lessons.

"Hmm…" Filbrick wondered aloud as he stroked his chin. "Boxing, eh?"

"Hey dad," Ford greeted as he walked into the living room from another room. "Is Stanley okay? I thought I heard him cryi- _OUCH!_ "

As he walked into the room, Ford accidentally stubbed his bare toe against the corner of a wall as he walked into the living room. His eyes bulged as the pain shot right up his foot. He fell back on the floor and grabbed his foot with his hands, rocking back and forth as he started to bawl himself.

Filbrick looked over at Ford as he sobbed in pain due to his hurt toe. He then looked back at the advertisement in the paper and his interest began to grow stronger.

"Hmmm…"

* * *

"The last time I saw dad, as you know, was when he kicked me out," Stan said, stuffing his hands into his pockets sadly. "That was the extent of our relationship. You had contact with him for the rest of high school, college, and all those years you spent in Gravity Falls before I came along and pushed you into the portal. But he completely dropped all connection with me, which must've been fine for him considering you were his favorite, Stanford  _Filbrick_  Pines."

"Oh c'mon, Stanley. Don't you think-"

"Nah, I'm not trying to start an argument on favoritism or anything," Stan cut off. "I'm just making a point. Dad's never thought highly of me when he's always had you to look at and be proud of for not being a screw-up. He actually saw something in you."

"But Dad saw something in you too," Ford tried to assure him. "Sure, maybe intellectually, no offense, I may have been the superior brother. But when it came to boxing, he was rooting for you more than he ever rooted for me. He was proud to see you fight back and actually win."

* * *

" _STANLEY PINES IS DOWN!_ "

In the middle of the fighting ring, a teenage Stan found himself lying on the ground on his forearms. His face bruised and somewhat bloodied from hits he had taken from his opponent across the ring. He was weakening, struggling not to collapse right in the ring and lose the match.

" _WILL HE GET UP OR IS HE DONE?!_ "

His hearing had become faded and somewhat muffled as he came closer and closer to passing out. His opponent laughed as he watched him crawl on the ground.

Stan looked to the side through the ropes of the ring and into the crowd. Through the many people chanting and cheering, he spotted Ford in his boxing trunks with several bruises on his face and upper body as he held a frozen steak on his eye, watching the match and cheering Stan on.

"YOU GOT THIS, STAN!"

Right beside him sat their mother, who had a look of concern and near disgust as she struggled to keep her eyes on the brutal match. Suddenly, she forced herself to face forward with her eyebrows narrowed seriously.

"COME ON, STANLEY! KICK HIS ASS FOR MOMMA!"

In the row right in front of them, his eyes darted to a pretty face in the audience. His girlfriend, Carla McCorkle sat with a serious look on her face as she watched him.

"GET UP, BABY! GET UP!"

Finally, looking back at the row his mom and brother sat upon, he spotted his dad at the end of the row. Unlike Ford, Ma, and Carla, he watched quietly, sitting straight and examining every move made. Looking as stern as he usually did, the man didn't do much but keep his eyes intently upon the match.

Despite the fact that his dad wore his usual sunglasses, Stan could tell that he was making eye contact with him at that moment. And with that, came a new feeling of strength and adrenaline that went through his body. Not from the shouting and cheering of his family and girlfriend, but from the eye contact he made with his dad.

"1...2...!" the referee shouted as he slammed his hand on the ground of the ring.

At that moment, Stan pushed himself off the ground, placing one of his hands on the referee's face and pushing him aside as he rose back to his feet.

" _AND STANLEY PINES HAS GOTTEN BACK UP!_ "

Many people in the crowd went crazy and cheered on at this announcement, including Ford, Ma, and Carla. Filbrick still remained neutral and kept his eyes focused on the match.

Stan looked back at his opponent and clenched his teeth angrily, revealing his mouth guard. The opponent's premature smile washed away and a look of seriousness came in. He lifted his clenched boxing gloves up defensively as he made an offensive move toward Stan.

As he approached him, he threw two quick punches at him, which were both instantly blocked by Stan. Following right after, Stan threw his own fist right over his opponent's retreating hands and landed a direct hit on the side of his face. The opponent spun around as he fell backwards, violently hitting the ground of the ring. This punch seemed to have knocked him out cold, as he made no movements after falling. Still, the referee went to his side and started counting, but the crowd was already going wild.

"...8...9...10!" the referee counted before getting off the ground. "K.O.!"

"THAT'S A KNOCKOUT! STANLEY PINES HAS WON THE MATCH!"

Stan stood in the middle of the ring, still trying to catch his breath before even beginning to process the fact that he had won. He was then handed a shiny gold trophy by a man in a suit, which he looked at in confusion. Soon enough, members of the crowd came rushing into the ring to celebrate the victory. He suddenly had people he had never seen before in his life patting him on the back and grabbing his hand to shake. It was all happening so soon and it was all too much to process at once for him.

Suddenly, he felt an arm wrap around his neck and pull him close. He looked over and saw that it was his Ford.

"HAHA! YOU DID IT, STAN!" Ford shouted victoriously. "YOU DID IT!"

Stan remained confused as he was still processing all the things happening at that moment. "I did? W-what did I do?"

"What else? You won the match, bro!" Ford told him.

"I...I did?" Stan asked, his eyes lighting up as he was told this.

Suddenly, his arm was tugged away and he was pulled into a sudden hug. He looked up to see his mother, who was tearing up. "There's Ma's little boxer!"

"Haha, hi Mom!" Stan chuckled as he hugged her back. He then pulled away and showed her his trophy. "I'm a winner!"

"Oh sweetie, you were always a winner before," Ma told him, caressing his face. "Tonight, everyone just gets to see that."

"Thanks, mom," Stan said as he looked on at her gratefully.

He was suddenly pulled away again and found his lips making contact with someone else's. As he opened his eyes, he saw Carla McCorkle, who smiled upon pulling away from him.

"I'm so happy for you," she simply told him as she fluttered her eyes flirtatiously at him.

Stan was already lost in a variety of various emotions, but Carla's kiss just continued to add to them. His face flushed red as he gave her a flustered smile.

"Thanks, babe," Stan responded in the best way he could as his mind was lost in a processing hell.

A shadow then came over the two, to which they looked up and saw Filbrick, who stared sternly upon the two. Carla glanced back and forth between him and Stan and awkwardly stepped away to give the two some space, giving Stan a 'We'll talk later' look. Stan acknowledged this before his eyes quickly went back to his dad.

"That was a good move you made at the end, kid," Filbrick told Stan as he placed his hand on his shoulder. "You impressed a lot of people tonight. Including me."

Stan's eyes bulged at that statement, and couldn't help but smile warmly at him, something he didn't do very often at all.

"R-really?" Stan asked.

Before Filbrick answered, he noticed some photographers taking pictures right beside them.

"C'mon, let's get a picture," he told Stan as he stood behind him and placed both his hands on his son's shoulders proudly. He faced forward at the cameras aimed at them but kept his normal stern look rather than smiling.

Stan looked up at him, however, and smiled brightly. He faced toward the camera and raised his trophy in his hands happily as the many cameras flashed, snapping pictures of the Pines boxing son and his father.

* * *

"I can see how easy it is to remember him for all the bad times, but to say there have been no good times…" Ford told Stan.

Stan stood staring at the grave, remembering his dad. To an extent, Ford was correct. There have been good moments with his dad. They may have been the rarer times of his early life, but to say they were non-existent was untrue. Perhaps the bad overshadowed the good, which allowed him to much more easily paint a more negative image of him, but the good times definitely painted him as an actually decent father. They proved that, at times, he truly did care for him.

"Maybe it's my fault for always looking for the easy way," Stan shrugged. "Maybe if I had done things differently- ya know, actually been a more responsible and better kid- then maybe things could've been different. But, as things turned out, I guess all I can say is that I appreciate what you've done for me. You did help me toughen up. Because of that, I was ready to fend for myself in times where I really needed to. And having been to prison in three different countries, that's a lot of times." Stan walked a little closer to the grave and kneeled down in the same way Ford did before. "If you were still around, I would've liked to try and impress you once more. I don't know if I would've, but it would've been a nice challenge. And it was always a good motivator anyway. I just hope that if you can somehow see me now, that you can see what I've done. Because it's all because of you. Even if I'd hate to admit it. But it's true. And I guess all I have to say is…"

He placed his hand on the tombstone and shut his eyes for a second as he felt them become misty. He opened them again and laid them upon the tomb once more.

"...thanks, dad."

He lifted his hand from the tombstone and stood back up, wiping a lone tear from his eye that had dripped down the side of his cheek. Ford walked up to him and placed his hand on his shoulder.

"That was nice," Ford told him with a slight smile. "I'm sure he would've liked that."

"I hope so," Stan sighed. He looked back at the grave, rereading the year 2015 as the year of his death. "Still can't believe it was just last year."

"Yeah, it really bites, doesn't it?" Ford claimed. "Showing up over a year late to our own father's funeral? God…"

Ford's eyes glanced around the other nearby tombs in the graveyard and noticed a nearby one. The name on the tomb read 'Stanley Pines', not too far to the right of Filbrick's grave.

"Stan, look," Ford told him as he walked over to it. Stan promptly followed behind him and looked over at the grave that he pointed at. "It looks like they had put a tomb up for you as well."

Stan read the grave with his name on it, marking the date of his birth and the date of his faked death. The final engraving read 'A loving brother, son, and free spirit'. The last bit hit him a bit, remembering that's what his mother called him. A free spirit. His family (or at the very least, his mother) had thought of and cared about him enough to put up a tomb for him back in Glass Shard following his faked death.

While he wanted to think more about this, a realization then popped into Stan's head. "Hold on, they put a grave for me here back in 1984. Dad was buried here just last year…"

"Yeah. So?"

"That means mom might still be around Glass Shard," Stan realized. "If they had put up a tomb for me so many years ago and put up another one for dad in the same place just last year, that means she could still be here!"

"What? Stan, dad died in February last year!" Ford reminded him. "I understand where you're coming from, but mom could've gone anywhere after dad died! We don't know if she's still living in Glass Shard!"

Stan turned his head around and soon spotted a nearby man working at the cemetery. He then turned his head back to Ford.

"Well, let's find out then," Stan told him before turning to the worker and running toward him. "HEY, YOU!"

The worker looked up at the twins as they ran over to him. Stan stopped directly in front of him.

"Hey you," Stan said again as he tried to catch his breath a bit. "You work here, right?"

"Yes, sir," he nodded as Ford caught up. "Been working here for a  _loooong_  time."

"How well do you know this place then?" Stan asked. "Do you know about these people? Their families and stuff?"

"A fair bit," the worker nodded. "I usually host funeral receptions here, so I end up knowing most families pretty well."

"What about the Pines?"

"Which ones?" the worker asked, knowing multiple different Pines families.

"Uhhhh... Filbrick Pines," Stan told him. "Died in February last year. Father of Stanley Pines, the Sham Total guy that nobody likes."

"Ah, those Pines," the worker nodded upon realizing who he was talking about. "Well, lots of people knew Filbrick. He was the owner of Pines Pawns, the local pawnshop. A tough man he was. Never changed his mind on a price he settled on."

"That's him, alright," Stan nodded. "Whatever happened to his wife, Caryn Pines?"

"The old phone psychic?" he asked. "Not too sure. After Filbrick died, the pawn shop was closed and so did her business. But they never took down the signs and stuff, so I assume the building's just used as a residence and nothing more now."

"Really?" Stan asked. "So she's not dead?"

"I wouldn't think so," the worker said. "Saw her when I hosted the funeral for Filbrick last year. Haven't heard or seen much from her since."

Stan took a minute to process this info, thinking about how while their father may have been gone, there was still a chance to see their mother again. And back at their old childhood house of all places.

"Well, it was good talking to you, but I must be on my way," the worker said, as he prepared to walk away. However, he stopped a looked back at the two. "Also, in regards to Stanley, recent news has it that he may not be dead after all. Crazy stuff, huh?"

Stan's heart sunk for a second. "Uhh...yeah...real crazy."

"Ain't it?" the man said with a chuckle. "Well, I'll see you, fellas, later."

The worker walked off, leaving Stan and Ford on their own. Once he was out of sight, Ford gave a sigh of relief.

"That could've been bad," he said.

"Yeah," Stan agreed. He then proceeded to start walking off toward one of the cemetery's exit gates.

"Where are we going now?" Ford asked as he caught up with Stan.

"We missed our chance to see dad again when he was alive," Stan told him. "Let's not do the same for mom."

* * *

With targets on their heads, walking through the streets of New Jersey was still a task the Stan twins had to take on carefully. Any second they aren't watching their surroundings could be the second that the police spots them and arrests them. Under normal circumstances and goals, Stan would be as reckless as ever to try to accomplish his objective, even if he knew he'd get caught. But this was a goal he cared too much about completing to take any risks. The goal itself was already a huge risk on its own.

Stan just wanted to see his mom again. While he had mixed feelings about his father, he had always loved his mom and he knew she had always loved him. When his dad was hard on him, she was there to balance it all out. She loved Ford a lot too, but due to their dad's preference for Ford, she often found herself coming to Stan's aid more than she'd ever had to come to Ford's. Mostly because Ford wasn't berated by their father as much rather than because she preferred Stan. She was just naturally there for Stan more, which seemed to strengthen their connection with one another. Stan has had his bad times with Ma too, but there were always far more good things to say about her than there were ever bad.

But nonetheless, Stan was paranoid of what to expect from Ma when they saw her again. What she'd say to them when they knocked on her door, which they now stood right across the street from.

_Pines Pawns: Jewelry, Watches, No Refunds_

The two stared right at the building. It had almost everything they remembered about it- the same sign with the chess piece beside it; Ma's Phone Psychic sign at the top left window. Both have been shut down since Filbrick's death, but the signs were never taken down. Considering it was probably only Ma who lived there now, it was understandable that she probably couldn't handle the job herself.

The building itself looked worn. The old bright red color of the bricks seemed to have been washed out. But it was still a silhouette of their old home. They were finally there, but there was only so much time they could spend staring at it.

"So how in the hell are we gonna do this?" Ford asked Stan, not taking his eyes off the building.

"I don't know," Stan admitted, not taking his eyes off the building either.

"Well, let's put ourselves in her shoes," Ford said as he finally turned to him. "We can't both just walk up to that door and say hello. That's like seeing a ghost and a half."

"Right, although, you gotta remember- my name's all over the local news right now," Stan reminded.

"Well, let's just pretend or hope she hasn't seen it yet," Ford added. "But honestly, there is no easy way of doing this."

"What if we just break it down for her?" Stan suggested.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, neither her or dad have heard from you for so long that they can't even say themselves if you're dead or alive," Stan explained. "So what if you just introduced yourself first and take most of the initial heat because your situation is easier to explain."

"You mean disappearing for over thirty years and not returning any calls or showing up to either my brother's funeral or my dad's is easy to explain?" Ford asked, narrowing his eyes at Stan.

"It's easier to explain than how her dead son is suddenly alive again over thirty years later!" Stan countered.

"Alright, fine," Ford accepted, taking Stan's point. "So I go explain my situation first. What are you going to do?"

"Well, I'm going to hide first, but when she's calm...or calmer...then you cue me in and I'll greet her myself and then we'll figure out that headache together," Stan explained.

"And are you sure you want to do this?" Ford asked once more.

"We're standing right in front of our old childhood house after decades, Ford," Stan reminded him. "Are we really gonna walk away now?"

"Alright," Ford said with a nervous sigh. "Go hide, and...I'll get this over with."

Stan nodded as he walked across the street and got into a hiding place, hiding directly in the alley between the house and Hot Belgian Waffles. Ford then crossed the street himself and stood right in front of the door. He glanced over to the alley where Stan stood and saw him promptly give a thumbs up as he stood peeking his eyes out to watch.

Ford turned his head back toward the front door, beginning to shiver nervously in fear. He has learned how to control his fear in the past, but confronting his mother again after several years of not seeing her was a whole separate level of fear that he wasn't sure anyone could overcome.

Nonetheless, he gulped nervously once before clenching his fist and promptly knocked on the door. He took one deep breath as he now waited for the door to be answered. Each second that passed where the door wasn't answered felt like an hour. From the alley, Stan watched intently and felt almost the same amount of nervousness as Ford, yet he wasn't even at the door himself. He was hiding, yet he was just as much as a nervous wreck.

About a minute had passed since Ford knocked, and he was beginning to contemplate knocking again or just settling on the idea that nobody was there. He knew Stan wouldn't approve of the latter, so he raised his fist to knock on the door again. However, just as he did so, he heard the locks turning inside, which frightened him. Soon enough, the doorknob started to turn just as his stomach did. He was beginning to feel nauseous, but he knew he couldn't let the first thing he'd do upon seeing his mom again was throw up on her. He tried to fight back his nervous feelings and clenched his teeth as hard as he could inside his mouth.

The door opened, and Ford's eyes bulged in surprise at the person that stood at the door. At the doorway stood a tall, bulky old man with thin gray hair, a Hawaiian shirt, glasses, and familiar eyes. Those eyes scanned Ford from top to bottom, but one glance at his face was all he needed to know who he was.

"Stanford…" he said in his rough, deep voice as he stared at him in shock.

"Sherman…" Ford replied as he stared right back at his older brother.

" _Oh no_ ," Stan said to himself as he noticed that it was Sherman Pines standing at the door.

"What are you doing here?" Sherman asked Ford, raising an eyebrow.

"I...uh…" Ford stuttered, trying his hardest to figure out how to speak to Sherman. He hadn't spoken to him in over thirty years but was ultimately thrown off by the fact that he was so casual about his presence. "I was...uh...in the area…"

"For what?" Sherman asked. "What makes you have to come all the way from the west?"

"It's complicated," Ford said as he began scratching the back of his neck.

"It sure must be," Sherman said as he narrowed his eyes at him. "Especially considering you haven't bothered keeping in touch for nearly seventeen years…"

"Seventeen years?" Ford asked. "Has it only been that long?"

"Well, considering that's when my grandkids were born," Sherman revealed to him. "Don't you remember?"

"I...uh…well, you see…" Ford stammered, putting his hand on his face nervously.

"HOLY HELL, STANFORD!" Sherman exclaimed as he looked at Ford's hand. "YOU HAVE SIX FINGERS!"

"Yeah, so?" Ford questioned as he held his hand out. "You knew that. It's how I was born."

"I thought you got them surgically removed?!" Sherman asked. "At least, that's what you told me at the hospital!"

"I did?" Ford asked, not having a clue what he was talking about. The question seemed to prompt a curious look in Sherman's eyes. "I mean...I did!"

"Have you been lying to me, Stanford?" Sherman asked, slowly walking up to Ford as his anger grew slightly.

"He hasn't," Stan's voice came from behind, grabbing Sherman and Ford's attention. "Ford's too bad at it."

" _Wha…?_ " Sherman mouthed, eyes bulging upon laying his eyes on Stan. He glanced back and forth between him and Ford, spotting the similarities and familiarities.

The face.

The hair.

The  _voice_.

"Who in the hell are you…?" Sherman asked, backing up in fear and disbelief at the sight he was seeing.

"Hey, Shermie," Stan waved, calling Sherman by the nickname he gave him as a very young child.

Sherman's mouth hung agape after hearing the name. He couldn't believe it. He almost didn't want to believe it. "St- _Stanley?_ "

Stan nodded at him, confirming his thoughts. He continued to stare at Stan in utter shock by his presence. It took a few seconds, but he was soon able to process the idea. His then proceeded to run up to him and wrap his arms around him, pulling him into a tight embrace as he began to sob.

"Please tell me," Sherman said through his tears. "Is it really you?"

Caught off guard by the hug, Stan was almost unsure how to respond. He lightly wrapped his arms around Sherman in response. "Yeah, bro. It's me. Lil' Stan."

"I can't believe it," Sherman said as he hugged tighter. "I'm so glad to see you again."

Stan was shocked by this reaction, which was the complete opposite of what he expected from his older brother. He gave in, however, and hugged him back tightly. "I'm glad to see you too."

Sherman pulled away from Stan and wiped a tear from his eye. Then, his look of joy shifted into one of rage as he suddenly grabbed Stan by the throat and violently pinned him against the brick wall of the building, which surprised Ford. "NOW I CAN KILL YOU  _FOR REAL!_ "

" _Alright_ ," Stan sputtered through his choking. " _Now, that's the response I was expecting._ "

"HOW ARE YOU ALIVE?!" Sherman asked, enraged and confused. "WHY ARE YOU HERE?!"

Ford ran over to Sherman and placed his hands on his left shoulder, trying to pull him away from Stan. "Sherman, calm down! Please!"

Sherman proceeded to let go of Stan as Ford asked, trying to fight back his feelings of rage and confused anger. Stan dropped to the ground and placed his hand on his throat as he began coughing and breathing heavily for air. Ford grabbed his arm and helped pick him up from the ground.

"Are you okay?" Ford asked.

"Yeah, sure," Stan assured him as he dusted his knees off, glancing back at Sherman. "It's just some brotherly love, ain't it?"

"Oh yeah!" Sherman nodded as he angrily turned back toward the two. "Let me show some 'brotherly love' for my two siblings who I haven't seen or spoken to in over a decade! One of them who I thought has been dead since 1984 and the other, who hasn't bothered to keep in touch since my grandkids were born! Yeah, let me smother you two with hugs and kisses instead of asking questions! Who needs questions anyway?! My little brothers are home! I should just be celebrating! WELL, HALLE- _FRICKIN_ -LUJAH!"

Stan and Ford glanced at one another nervously before looking back at Sherman, not knowing how to respond.

"So, I guess you haven't missed us then?" Stan asked innocently.

Sherman stared at the two, maintaining a look of pure anger and sternness. However, as he continued to stare, he couldn't help himself anymore. He broke into tears and walked up to the two, putting one arm around each of them as he bawled.

"Of course, I missed you knuckleheads," Sherman said through his tears. "I missed you two  _so much._ "

Stan and Ford began to tear up a bit themselves as they wrapped their own arms around him and one another. It was the first hug the three had shared together since they were kids.

Sherman wasn't around often after he moved out of the house, but the family still stayed in touch with him. However, he often struggled financially due to careless young adult habits when he went on his own, which constantly frustrated Filbrick. Eventually, Sherman came home to his parents with a child of his own and told them he couldn't afford to take care of him because of how much he was struggling. Of course, Ma and Filbrick were willing to help, but Filbrick was devastated that he had a child that he wasn't even able to care for on his own, resulting in him distancing him from the family.

He still kept in touch with his two brothers though, but after Stan got kicked out of the house a few months later, Ford was the only sibling able to keep in touch, whereas Stan was on his own, traveling state to state trying to build his StanCo brand. But once Ford got sucked into the portal, Stan was the one Sherman had been contacting instead. Not wanting to risk his true identity leaking, he had tried to avoid contact with Sherman despite the fact he was his brother. However, they made inevitable and unavoidable contact with one another when he had decided to be present for the birth of his grandkids, Dipper and Mabel Pines. There, Sherman wanted to have a proper talk and catch up, but Stan excused himself after meeting his great niece and nephew, once again trying to keep ties to his family bare so they wouldn't know the truth of what really happened to Ford while he was taking on his identity.

Of course, Sherman still didn't know this. While Ford is finally out of the portal, Stan knew it may have finally been a good time to catch up and explain things to Sherman without the risk of him having to call the cops for accidentally trapping his brother in another dimension.

But explanations can wait a little longer. They needed to address the reason they were there first.

The hug ended and the three brothers pulled away from one another, each wiping away their tears from their reunion. Sherman then cleared his throat.

"So...are you two gonna make me ask?" he began.

"We'd love to clear the air already, Shermie, but we gotta get Ma in on things first," Stan told him.

Sherman stared at Stan with an unsure expression. "Mom?"

"Yeah, mom," Stan nodded.

"We...uh...we already know about dad," Ford told him.

"Yeah, before coming here, we visited the cemetery," Stan added. "We may have been late on saying our goodbyes, but we still said them earlier."

"But we heard that Ma was still around," Stan said. He then caught Sherman's expression and noticed something was up. "She's...she's still alive...right?"

"Uh...yeah…" Sherman confirmed as he started to rub the back of his neck. "She's inside."

"Oh, thank God," Stan stated, letting out a breath that he had been holding onto for awhile. "Well...I guess we should break the news to her too then."

"I...uh...I don't know if that's a good idea," Sherman told him.

"Why not?" Stan asked, frowning again.

"I'm not sure I know how to explain..."

"Don't worry about explaining things to her, Shermie," Stan cut off as he began walking toward the door of the house. "Let's just break it to her first and we'll explain everything together after."

"Stan, wait!" Sherman said, reaching his hand out to stop Stan as he walked toward the door. "I'm telling you, it's probably not a good idea for…for..."

"For what?" Stan cut off again, starting to get annoyed. "For us to see our mother again?"

"No...that's not…"

"You know how long I've waited to see that woman again, Shermie?" Stan asked, anger starting to rush in as he pushed Sherman away and began walking inside the house. "Damn you if you forbid me from even being able to lay eyes on her again! It may have been decades since we last spoke, but she's still my mother and I'm still her son!"

As Stan marched inside the house, Ford followed behind nervously. Sherman sighed, placing his hand on his face as he dreaded what was to come next.

"Oh boy…"

* * *

Stan carefully peeked his head inside each room he passed by for his mother. He was so lost in his search for Ma that he completely disregarded the fact that he was searching through the house that he grew up in. Rooms he recognized and remembered, but didn't pay attention to because they didn't have his mom inside.

 _It can wait. It can all wait_ , he thought to himself, not wanting to let anything else distract him in his pursuit to find and see his mother again.

Suddenly, he peeked inside a room, ready to disregard it as well until he spotted something. He backed up and peeked his head further into the room, spotting the back of a woman sat in a rocking chair in the corner of a room that was mostly empty besides a bed. Her chair faced outside toward a window, allowing her a clear view of the backyard. He saw her grey hair done in a partial beehive, while the rest of it hung loose- the same way his mother did it.

"Mom…" Stan quietly said to himself as he looked at her, eyes quickly tearing up.

He began slowly walking over to her from behind her chair. At the same moment, Ford had caught up and peeked his head inside the room cautiously. He quickly noticed Stan making his way over to their mother, eyes bulging.

"Stan!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "What are you doing?! You're going to freak her out!"

"I can't wait anymore, Sixer," Stan told him tearfully. "A man needs to see his mom again."

Ford was beginning to panic that Stan was already going in for the reveal, awaiting a terrified reaction from Ma. He wanted to stop him, but he was already far too close to her and knew it was too late.

Stan took a step in front of Ma and kneeled down to come face to face with her while she sat in her rocking chair. He found her sleeping in the chair; her face frail, but peaceful.

"Ma?" he asked in a quiet voice, yet loud enough to be able to wake her up. He placed his hand upon hers as it laid on the armrest of the chair. "Ma, wake up."

At that moment, she slowly opened her eyes as she awakened from her sleep. Her eyes then fell upon Stan's face. And as he looked into her eyes, he could see the same woman who raised him.

" _Oh, God…_ " Stan said tearfully, overcome with the emotion of looking into the eyes of his own mother again after so long. He leaned over and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her. He began to weep as he placed his head on her shoulder. "I never thought I'd ever see this day come again. I've missed you  _so much_ , Ma. You have no idea."

He continued to sob for a moment as his emotions overwhelmed him. However, after a few seconds, he realized something wasn't right. He was hugging his mother and she wasn't saying a word.

He pulled himself away from the hug and looked her in the eyes again. She just stared at him. Not with a smile. Not with a frown. Pure neutrality was all he saw on her face. But she was awake. And the movement in her eyes meant that she was definitely alive.

"Ma?" Stan asked with concern. "Ma, are you okay?"

Still no response. She just continued to stare at him blankly, occasionally blinking as normal. But the rest of her behavior didn't really imply 'normal'.

Ford proceeded to walk up beside Stan, crouching down next to him so he could see what was wrong with their mother. "What's wrong?"

"She ain't saying anything," Stan told him, starting to get weirded out. He waved his hand back and forth in front of her face, but she remained unresponsive to it. Still, she continued to stare and blink at the two of them.

"You think you might've surprised her so hard you sent her into shock?" Ford asked, raising an eyebrow at their mom's odd behavior.

"She didn't even seem surprised in the first place," Stan replied. He started snapping his fingers in front of his mom's face. "Ma? Are you alright?"

"You don't think she's gone deaf or blind, do you?" Ford suggested, which awakened a bit of concern in him.

"She's neither," Sherman intervened as he entered the room and approached the two.

"Then what's wrong with her, Shermie?" Stan asked him as he continued trying to get her attention. "She reminds me of how Grandma acted when we were kids."

Stan's eyes then bulged as he came to a realization of his statement. "How...how grandma acted…" His concerned eyes then turned toward Sherman. "Shermie...does Ma have…?"

Sherman's eyes narrowed sadly at Stan as he nodded his head in confirmation. "Six years ago, Ma got diagnosed with Alzheimer's."

Stan and Ford's hearts dropped with this revelation. Stan glanced back at Ma and started shaking in mixed feelings of disbelief and horror. "No...that can't… _that can't be!_ "

"I'm sorry, Stan," Sherman said as he placed his hand on his shoulder. "I've been here taking care of her since she got diagnosed. She's alive still, but she's forgotten just about everything. Where she is, who she is, and...us."

"That's complete crap…" Stan denied tearfully as he slapped his brother's hand off of his shoulder. He jumped over to Ma on his knees and placed his hands on both of her shoulders. "MA! IT'S ME, STANLEY!"

"Stan…" Sherman said as he hovered over him, preparing to pull him back.

"DON'T YOU REMEMBER?!" Stan exclaimed as he began to shake Ma.

"Stan, please…" Ford said tearfully as he also started to realize Stan's denial was about to get out of hand.

"IT'S ME, MA!" Stan exclaimed through his tears, continuing to disregard his brothers as he shook Ma even more violently. "IT'S YOUR LITTLE FREE SPIRIT!"

"STAN, THAT'S ENOUGH!" Sherman exclaimed once he realized how hard Stan was shaking her, pulling him away from her.

"OH  _GOD_ , SHERMIE, NOT MA!" Stan exclaimed as he wrapped his arms tight around Sherman, having completely broken down at that point. "NOT MA, SHERMIE!"

Sherman hugged him back, patting him on the back as he let him vent out his emotions, knowing how hard this was for him. While Ford wasn't nearly as hysterical as Stan was, he was still incredibly saddened by the situation. He controlled his crying, simply allowing his tears to stream as he crouched down beside the two brothers on the ground and hugged the two.

And throughout everything, their mom just continued to stare silently and nothing more.

* * *

About an hour had passed, and since then, everyone had calmed down and sat together at a table in the back patio, each holding a can of Pitt Soda. There in the back, they could see the sky slowly start to gain an orange hue, signaling the start of the setting New Jersey sun. In the time since they had sat down, they had finally explained their situations, including where they had been and gone, the truth of the hospital meeting, and generally what's been happening in their lives.

"So yeah," Ford said to Sherman. "We were supposed to land further north, but we washed up on the beach beside the main town."

"Then, for some reason, he went and decided to bring along some weird baby octopus similar to the one that nearly killed us a few hours before," Stan added, as he stared down at his soda dejectedly.

Suddenly, the Snacken crawled from Ford's back onto his shoulder, presenting itself in view for Sherman to see. As soon as he laid eyes on it, he jumped in his seat. He then chuckled as he got a closer look at it.

"Ah, that little fella's actually sorta cute," Sherman admitted.

"Yeah, say that after you've had one wrapped around your head for ten minutes," Stan said with an eye roll.

"But wow," Sherman said as he looked back at Ford. "I wouldn't have ever guessed that such weird things would actually exist in this world. Not even counting what exists outside of our dimension. That's some fascinating stuff, Stanford."

"Yeah, Dipper and Mabel love it," Stan pitched in and he sorrowly played around with his can.

"They do?" Sherman asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

"Yup," Stan nodded as he gestured over to Ford. "Pretty sure Dipper wants to become just like this nerd one of these days."

"Hey, it wouldn't hurt to have another one in the family," Ford joked as he held the Snacken in his hands. "But seriously, Sherman, Dipper and Mabel are great. Very smart, funny, and overall joys to be around. You should be very proud of your son for raising such amazing kids."

"Agreed," Stan nodded. "Those twins got a lot going for them. They're truly special."

"I'm happy to hear that," Sherman said. "Of course, I'd love to see them again. It has been many years, but...you know. With what's going on with Ma and all..."

"Completely understandable," Ford nodded. "Take care of her as much as she needs."

"Yeah," Stan agreed. "Stay here and take good care of her. When she eventually...uh...you know…"

"Yes, I promise I'll visit when I'm no longer needed over here," Sherman answered glumly, knowing the circumstances behind that promise.

"Good to know," Stan said, his eyes becoming somewhat misty again as he thought about the same circumstances.

Sherman sighed before smiling at the two. "Ya know, despite the obvious bad of today, I'm truly glad that you two are still around. It feels good to know that despite an inevitable future, there's still close family around."

Stan and Ford smiled back at Sherman, sharing the same feelings and thoughts as him. However, at that moment, the two heard police sirens in the distance. They turned their heads toward the direction it was coming from and were soon reminded of another stake at place.

Ford sighed as he stood up from his seat. "Unfortunately, we can't stick around much longer. Stan and I are still being searched for by the local police."

"And with an idea as big as the old Shammy guy coming back from the dead, ya really can't expect what they'd wanna do to him," Stan added as he stood up as well. "This ain't Gravity Falls. People here ain't used to weird stuff like that."

"Precisely," Ford agreed. "With that said...it looks like we should be getting on our way."

"Not yet," Stan said as he began walking toward the house.

"Where are you going?" Ford asked, raising an eyebrow as he followed Stan.

"I gotta say goodbye to mom."

* * *

Stan walked back into his mother's room and spotted her still rocking in her chair in the corner. He sighed, trying to mentally tell himself to keep his emotions in check and not to break down the same way he did last time. He already accepted her condition. He just needed to say his goodbye.

Especially considering it would most likely be his final one.

He walked up quietly next to her and kneeled down in front of her. His eyes narrowed sadly as he looked into her eyes again. He started to tear up, which was something he just couldn't prevent. However, he wasn't going to allow it to get much worse.

He reached his hand over and placed it on top of hers again. He wanted to say something to her, but it was hard figuring out what to say when he knew she had no idea what anything was anymore. Such a contrast from the last time he saw her.

" _You…_ " Stan said as he tried to fight back his want to start sobbing. "...have no idea  _how much_  you've affected me...or how much you've shaped me into the man I am today..."

* * *

"Stanley?" Ma Pines asked as she entered her son's bedroom. She heard a faint sobbing as she glanced over at the bottom bunk of the twins' bunk bed. There Stan laid crouched up on his side, staring at the tooth he had clenched up in his hands. "Stanley, sweetie?"

Stan sniffled as he heard Ma walk over to him. "Mom, why does dad hate me?"

"Aw, sweetie," Ma said as he sat right beside him on his bed. "He doesn't hate ya. Believe me, I've been married to the man for almost twenty years. He just has a real funny way of showing love."

"Love?" Stan questioned as he turned to her. "He called me a wuss! He's always hard on me!"

"He's hard on you because he loves you," Ma told him. "And he wants the best from ya. Trust me, kiddo. Your father wouldn't do what he does now if he didn't care." She placed his hand under his chin and lifted it up so he would look at her. "You just gotta put your head up and stick your neck through it."

Stan then sat up straight up in his bed right beside Ma. "But what if I can't be as strong as he wants me to?"

"Oh, sweetie," she said as she wrapped her arms around him lovingly. "I know you can be. You're a Pines. It's in your blood. Both you and your brother are a lot stronger than you both realize. Your father is just about bringing that strength out and showing it." She then hugged him tight against her side. "But no matter what happens, you'll both be my little bundles of joy. You hear me?"

Stan sniffled again as he smiled and hugged Ma back. "Thanks, mom. Just don't tell Ford about this, please."

Ma chuckled lightly at this response and smiled comfortingly as she hugged him tightly back. "Anything for you, my little free spirit."

_THUMP!_

" _OUCH!_ " Ford's voice cried from the living room. Soon after, the two heard Ford begin bawling himself.

Ma sighed as she pulled away from her hug with Stan and stood up from their bed. "Looks like I gotta rescue your brother now," she said as she looked back down and noticed how he Stan was still dripping wet from the rain outside. "While I do that, why don't you go and shower before you start to reek of Jersey, huh?"

"Haha, okay, mom!" Stan chuckled, prompting Ma to smile once more at him before leaving the room.

Stan jumped out of bed and began making his way to the door himself so he could go to the bathroom. However, he noticed himself in their room's full-body mirror as he passed. He quickly backed up to it and took a good, long look at himself. He took off his glasses and examined them, noticing how the side had been knicked from when Crampelter hit him with the soccer ball.

He was about to call Ma back and let her know that he was going to need new glasses, but he then looked at himself back in the mirror and got a look at himself without them. He couldn't see as well without them, but his view wasn't blurry enough to where he couldn't see at all. He put the glasses back on and could see better, but he had suddenly found a preference in that brief look at himself without them.

At that moment, his mind was decided. He promptly took his glasses off and pitched them into the nearby trash bin without hesitation. The impact of the throw smashed the lens at the same time, so there was no going back at that point unless he decided to get a new pair.

But he was settled and content with his appearance. He looked at himself in the mirror again and smiled, as well as gladly embracing the gap in the middle of his teeth that he had received.

* * *

"Oh...Ma…" Stan said as he tearfully placed his arms around his mom one last time, giving her one final embrace. He made it as gentle and as loving as he possibly could, knowing this would likely be the last moment the two would share together.

Ford and Shermie promptly stepped into the room, walking in on Stan having his moment with Ma. As they entered, he pulled away from her and got up, wiping the tears from his face as he stepped aside and allowed Ford to step past him to share his own final moment with Ma.

Ford crouched down on his knee, sniffling as he began getting emotional himself. Like Stan, he didn't know how to properly go about the situation in terms of final words. The emotional tension in comparison to learning of Filbrick's death was different. Mostly because he was trying to talk to someone whom he loved that was still suffering, while his dad was already at rest. This made it harder for him to come up with the words to say, so instead, he just hugged her gently. After a brief embrace, he pulled away and placed his six-fingered hand on top of hers and squeezed it.

"Farewell, mother," he said shakily as he dried his eyes with his sleeve so he can see her face clearly once more.

Having been through the pain of being forgotten by Ma for long enough already and watching her mind slowly devolve in time, it was hard for Sherman to get as emotional as his brothers were anymore. Of course, her condition depresses him and it hurts her to see her continuously get worse, but he had already felt what the Stan twins were feeling. At that point, he could only empathize with them.

Ford got up from the floor and cleared his throat as he walked over to Stan and Sherman. "Alright, let's get going," he said, still slightly choked up.

The three walked over to the doorway, with Sherman holding onto the doorknob, ready to close up the room so Ma could sleep on her own. However, Stan looked back at the door frame and began to analyze the interior of the room before realizing what it was.

"Hey Shermie, isn't this our old bedroom?"

"It is," Sherman nodded as he looked back inside the room as well.

Ford glanced back at the door frame himself and instantly recognized it with this being pointed out. He poked his head back inside and he analyzed it too. Soon, he spotted the wall where the bunk he and Stan shared used to stand against. "Huh. It  _is_  our old room."

"Why do you keep mom in here?" Stan asked. "Why not her and dad's room?"

"Mom started to become a bit...antsy as her mind deteriorated," Sherman explained. "I eventually found out that this was the only room I could keep her in where she'd stay calm."

"Really?" Ford asked. "Our old room is the only room that keeps her sound?"

"Guess so," Sherman nodded. "It could mean something, but eh. I don't like to give the two of you  _that_  much credit," he said with a slight smile.

"Too bad," Stan said with a slight smile as he slapped him on the back in a brotherly manner. "Because it means something to me."

"I'm glad it does," Sherman said it with a chuckle as he slowly closed the door to Ma's room, leaving her alone so she could soon fall asleep again.

* * *

"Well, do you want me to at least give y'all a lift to the airport or something?" Sherman offered as he walked the twins outside the house.

"No, no," Ford rejected. "No need. Firstly, airfare across the country is expensive and secondly, local news could've spread to state news and then everyone could be looking for us. We need to find our own ride back." He then looked down the road and sighed. "Not sure how we're going to manage to do that, but surely we'll find a way."

Sherman's eyes bulged as he realized something. He then looked across the street and glanced at an old, dark blue El Diablo convertible parked on the curb.

"Well, maybe you don't have to worry about that after all," Sherman said as he pointed over to the car. "I'm not sure if you remember, but that's dad's car. Since he passed, I've been trying to keep it in good condition in my time outside of helping mom. I'm an old coot so I just take it to get washed, filled with gas and generally checked every few months rather than doing it by myself."

"That's great," Ford said. "But again, you don't have to drive us in your car anywhere."

"It ain't my car, Stanford," Sherman said as he took a car key out of his pocket and held it out to him. "It's yours."

Ford's eyes bulged in disbelief as he took the key from Sherman. "What?"

"Dad left it for you in his will," Sherman revealed.

"But...why?" Ford asked. "Neither Stan and I have seen him in decades! He should've given it to you!"

"Dad and I never really got the chance to seal our bond after all that happened decades ago, even when I came back to help him with Ma," Sherman explained. "I guess he'd rather leave it to you with the hope that you were still alive somewhere. Meanwhile, dad left his other home essentials for me, such as the vacuum cleaner, laundry machine, couch, and so forth."

"W-what did dad leave for me?" Stan intervened, feeling slightly uncomfortable asking.

Sherman frowned at Stan. "What would he leave for a dead man, Stanley?"

"Oh. Right," Stan sadly realized, having forgotten about his faked death coming into play.

Sherman looked back at Ford, still noticing his very hesitant eyes. "It's yours, Ford. Don't worry. I already got my own car," he said as he gestured to another vehicle parked on the curb beside their house.

Ford still looked back and forth between the key in his hand and his older brother. He remained hesitant for a good minute before clenching the key acceptingly within his fist and smiling at Sherman before walking up to him to give him a hug.

"Thank you, Sherman," Ford said with a thankful chuckle. "I'm glad that even after all this time we've been apart that we were able to pick it off like we had just gone yesterday."

"We're family, Stanford," Sherman said with a smile. "We're also really old and so it's almost pointless to hold a grudge considering we've never wronged one another." He then placed his other arm around Stan and pulled him into the hug. "I'm just glad to see my little brothers again."

"Haha, you too, bro," Stan chuckled as he patted Sherman on the back.

"Now get a move on, you two," Sherman said, pulling away from them. "I ain't about to be responsible for paying your bail when you both get caught."

"Ha-ha," Stan laughed sarcastically as he made his way over to the passenger seat of Filbrick's old car and opened the door. "There's the old square I remember," he said, prompting a grin out of Sherman.

"We'll send our greetings from Gravity Falls when we get there!" Ford said as he opened up the driver's seat door.

"I'll be waiting," Sherman said as he stood on the sidewalk. "Say hello to Dipper and Mabel for me. Tell them I miss them."

"Will do," Stan nodded after rolling down the car window in his seat. "It was good catching up, Shermie. Take good care of Ma…" Stan stopped himself as he suddenly felt a bit choked up again. Sherman noticed this and gave him a look of empathy. "Take good care of her...until the end."

"I promise…" Sherman said quietly with a melancholy nod as he started to wave at the two. "Happy birthday, you two."

"It ain't," Stan said with a sniffle but smiled slightly as he waved back. "But thanks."

"Farewell, Sherman," Ford said as he waved at his older brother once more.

"Farewell, my brothers."

Ford then placed both hands on the wheel and drove the car out of the parking space on the curb before promptly driving down the street. Stan continued waving back at Sherman as they drove off until they eventually turned a corner, leaving his sight.

Sherman let out a melancholy sigh as the two left. Still, he stood in place on the sidewalk and looked across the street at their house and examined it. He shut his eyes and began looking back at all the fond memories he's had with the place.

* * *

Stan and Ford continued driving through the empty streets of Glass Shard. Stan stared out the window silently as he indirectly watched the sunset over the ocean. He looked over at the beach itself and watched the waves crash into the sand. He stared on emptily at the sight as he just thought of various things that his emotions brought him.

Ford then braked at a stoplight and proceeded to take the moment to take the Snacken off of his wrist, holding it out in the palm of his hand. He sighed as he looked on at it.

"You know, when I woke up this morning, I figured that this day was going to be much different than what it turned out being," Ford said as he took the Snacken and placed it in the backseat, letting it sit there on its own. He then glanced over at Stan. "Days ago before reaching the Arctic, if you had told me we'd be starting our birthday stranded out in the middle of the ocean and then ending it driving our deceased dad's car back to Gravity Falls, I would've slapped you. But now I just feel like slapping myself again."

Getting no response from Stan as he continued staring out the window, he narrowed his eyes sadly at him. "You're thinking of mom, aren't you?"

"What do you think?" Stan asked sarcastically. "She's all I'm going to be thinking about for the next few days."

"I can't say I don't feel the same," Ford said as he turned back toward the road ahead.

"Of course not," Stan told him. "You're my brother. Why wouldn't you feel the same?"

"You're going to have to forgive me, Stan," Ford said. "You know I'm not the best at speaking during such high emotional tensions like this."

"It's fine. Don't worry," Stan shrugged carelessly as his eyes glanced over at the close-distanced beach.

Stan began to feel a sense of familiarity in his current situation. He was sitting in a passenger seat of a car right beside Ford. The two were sharing somewhat of an emotional moment within the car and they were driving through what they could consider home.

It all came back to his dream earlier that morning- before Bill Cipher had paid him a mental visit. The only differences were that they weren't in Gravity Falls and that the current emotional moment was more somber than it was tender.

"Hey Sixer," Stan said as he continued staring outside into the distance.

"Yes, Stanley?"

"Remember when I had that nightmare last night?" Stan asked.

"What about it?"

"Well, there was this part of it at first that was actually pretty good," Stan explained. "Before the actual nightmare stuff started happening. You and I were there driving in a car, talking kinda like how we are now."

"Talking about what?" Ford asked, raising an eyebrow curiously.

"I don't remember," Stan lied. "But it was something nice. That whole part of the dream was nice. It was the kinda dream that you wish was actually real. The kind you wouldn't want to wake up from."

"Interesting," Ford said, considering the fact that this was a dream involving him.

"I guess," Stan shrugged. "But my point is that I wish we could've been living that part of the dream right now. And that everything that happened today was the nightmare that one of us would wake up from." Stan then turned over to Ford and looked at him. "Do you ever get that feeling? When you wish the good things you thought of were happening instead of the bad things that actually happened?"

"I think everybody gets that feeling, Stan," Ford said. "But despite how nice it might be to live your dreams instead of your nightmares, I feel that moments like our current one are inevitable and necessary for ourselves as people. Imagine a person who has all their dreams come true and has nothing bad happen to occur in their lives. What would a nice moment mean to them then? Would it not just feel like a normal and regular thing rather than something special?"

"I don't know," Stan said, getting somewhat lost in the point Ford was attempting to make. "Maybe?"

"The way I see it, having bad moments just makes the good moments all the more sweeter once they arrive," Ford stated.

This idea made Stan think for a moment. He then realized that what Ford said may have been somewhat true. Despite it being their birthday, they've been through multiple downs. The next few days may not be the best, but eventually, a point will come where they'll share a good moment and perhaps the hell they've gone through may have been worth it all.

And with them beginning their final run back to Gravity Falls, perhaps that moment is actually much sooner than they think.

Suddenly, he felt something amongst the back of his headrest, slightly startling him. He glanced back and noticed the Snacken crawling it's way onto the shoulder of his chair, looking down at him.

While this would normally freak Stan out, he felt a bit better about the Snacken at that moment and smiled at it. He placed his hand on top of it and began stroking it's head softly.

"Makes the good moments sweeter, huh?" Stan said to Ford as he continued petting the Snacken.

Ford smiled at him before directing his eyes back forward to the road ahead as the light turned green. They began driving again, more than ready to continue their journey back to Gravity Falls.

And with their eyes focused ahead, they soon drove past an old set of swings on the beach that faced the setting sun over the glistening blue ocean.

* * *

 

_GSVB'OO IVNVNYVI GSV WZBH GSVB FHVW GL KOZB_

_GSVM IVGFIM GL GSV UZOOH HLNV HFMMB WZB_


	24. Stan-doff: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Season 1A Finale] The Stans embark on their final run back to Gravity Falls, but Ford notices Stan acting very strange along the way.

What was normally a quiet and average evening for the city of Cheyenne in the state of Wyoming had suddenly become much more siren-filled.

Several police cars drove aggressively through the main roads and streets of the capital city. Reports of a robbery taking place at a gas station sounded over police scanners, sending out several issues for backup. Many cruisers arrived at the gas station and parked outside, having their weapons ready for use should the situation call for it.

Across the street from the gas station was a lone motel. Through a window on the bottom floor, a pair of eyes stuck out through the blinds to watch the incident take place. The red and blue lights of the police cars flashing repeatedly, illuminating the night while reflecting in the watcher's eyes.

"What's going on out there, Ford?" a voice asked from behind him. "Is everything alright?"

Ford looked away from the blinds and back at his brother, Stan, who laid in one of two beds in their motel room.

In the past twenty-four hours, the Stan twins have managed to drive all the way from Glass Shard Beach to Cheyenne. Ensuring they waste as little time as possible, the two alternated between continuing their drive back to Oregon and sleeping every eight hours without stopping for anything other than occasional gas refills and food. They didn't stay at any hotels prior, not wishing to prolong their arrival in Gravity Falls any longer than it needed to be.

However, in the case of the night, it had become apparent that they would need to stop and finally wash up from the clothes they had been stuck wearing for about a week at sea. While they had the room, they decided they may as well spend the night there too rather than using it just for a quick shower.

"It appears like some sort of robbery is happening at the gas station across the street," Ford told him before looking back through the blinds again. "I don't think it has anything to do with us."

"A robbery, eh?" Stan asked before laying his head back in bed with a smile. "Ah, Wyoming. I've missed ya."

"Yeah, I don't think it has anything to do with another one of your state bans," Ford said as he continued to watch the police. He then stepped away from the blinds and walked away from the window. "Hopefully that doesn't become an issue later in the night. We're only about a sixteen hour drive away from Gravity Falls."

"Sixteen hours, huh?" Stan asked. "Guess we'll be there tomorrow night if we wake up early then, right?"

"That's the plan," Ford said as he walked into the bathroom and grabbed his toothbrush, placing a normal amount of toothpaste on it before proceeding to brush. "That is if nothing else impedes or halts our progress in any sort of way on the ride there."

"I doubt anything will get in the way," Stan brushed off. "Traffic's been alright, we've been mostly clear of idiot drivers, and we still got a fair bit of diner money left for gas and food! I say we're doing pretty well."

Ford spit out into the sink. "I agree," he said before proceeding to rinse his mouth. "However, you never know what else may come up. Let's not jinx ourselves."

"Yeah, yeah," Stan said, before suddenly getting jumped by the Snacken as it landed on top of his head. "AHH!" he screamed, startled by the sudden attack. "FORD! YOUR GODDAMN OCTOPUS IS ATTACKING ME AGAIN!"

Ford rushed out of the bathroom to see Stan freaking out as the Snacken wrapped itself around the back of his head. "Oh, for Pete's sake…" he said somewhat annoyed as he went up to Stan.

"GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!" Stan pleaded as he leaned the back of his head for him to get it off.

"Hold still!" Ford demanded as he placed his hands gently on the Snacken's head and began to firmly pull it away from Stan. Suddenly, it popped off and Stan's head was free.

Stan rubbed the back of his head, feeling for scratches or marks. "Did it bite? Did it draw blood?"

Ford examined the back of Stan's head, spotting nothing. "No, you're just fine. Just a little Snacken saliva."

"Dammit, Ford!" Stan exclaimed frustratedly as he grabbed a small rag from the bathroom and wiped the back of his head dry. "That's the fourth time that thing has jumped on my head like that! You gotta do something about it!"

"Oh please, Stanley," Ford said, rolling his eyes. "It's just playing. It's only a youngling after all.

"My idea of 'playing' with an octopus ain't letting it try to swallow my head whole," Stan argued as he began rubbing his eyes as he sat back down on his bed.

"Just leave it alone, Stan," Ford said as he pet the Snacken's head.

"You're telling ME to leave it alone?!" Stan asked. "Hello?! Almost had my head swallowed for the fourth time here!"

"Fine, I'll keep it in the bathtub tonight if it'll make you feel better," Ford told him as he walked over to the bathroom and gently put the Snacken inside, to which it stared at him until he shut the curtain, leaving it alone.

"Yeah, it would," Stan responded. He then began to rub his eyes more roughly, which got Ford's attention.

"What's wrong with your eyes?" Ford asked, raising an eyebrow as he watched Stan.

"I don't know," Stan said as he kept rubbing them. "They just started to hurt all of a sudden. A lot."

"Well, stop rubbing them!" Ford told him. "You could make it worse!"

"I beg to differ," Stan said as he continued rubbing.

"Stanley!"

"Alright, alright!" Stan said as he took his hands off his eyes, which were now completely bloodshot.

Ford gasped as he looked at them. "Jesus, Stanley! Your eyes!"

"What? What's wrong?" Stan asked as he got up from his bed and went into the bathroom again. He looked at himself in the mirror and got a look at his bloodshot eyes, which startled him on first glance. "Yeah, that looks like a problem."

"I told you that rubbing could make it worse," Ford said as he crossed his arms.

"Well, the sight ain't too pretty but the pain at that bad anymore," Stan said with a smile. However, it quickly faded and he frowned, placing and rubbing his hand against the side of his head. "Although, now I got a bit of a headache."

"Just go lie down," Ford urged him. "I'm sure both will be gone in the morning."

"I hope," Stan said as walked back over to his bed, rubbing his head. "This is a weird headache. Not sure I've ever had one like it before." His eyes bulged at a sudden realization. "Dammit, Ford! I swear if that octopus gave me something…!"

"I'm highly doubtful that it did, Stan," Ford said with an eye roll as he began toying with his wristwatch, Meridian. "As long as it's secretions and other fluids don't interact directly with your blood or your digestive system, you'll be fine. You should be more worried about that Snacken eating you alive than you should ever be about it giving you something. And considering it's still a baby, it looks like neither of those is likely."

"What the hell are you talking about? It swallowed my head whole yesterday!" Stan reminded him.

"And did it draw blood around your neck? Or did any of its insides enter your mouth?" Ford asked as he kept pressing buttons on Meridian.

"Well...uh…" Stan began as he thought about the question and tried to remember if he did. "I hope not…"

"You didn't," Ford answered for him. "Because if you had, it would have most likely burned the insides of your stomach or given you violent salmonella poisoning. Or both. And either would've been instantaneous."

With this revelation, Stan stared at Ford blankly and almost fearfully. "God, all that happens for a bite?" Stan asked.

"What?" Ford questioned before realizing Stan's lack of attention to what he was referring specifically. "No, no. We're talking if it's secretions or saliva accidentally entered your digestive tract. If it had bitten you, all your blood would have coagulated within the hour of the bite, to which your heart would've soon stopped."

"How the hell do you know this?" Stan asked, eye twitching in disgust.

"Admittedly, I'm not one hundred percent sure on the Snacken," Ford told him. "But results of other Kraken species across dimensions that I've researched have resulted in the same or similar results, so I think it might be safe to say the Snacken might as well."

"And yet...you brought one along with us…" Stan pointed out annoyedly with this new information to him.

"For ethical research," Ford told him. "It's not everyday one gets the chance to study an anomalous being from another dimension that dropped into our own. You know what any other of these so-called scientists and researchers would do to it had they gotten their hands on it? Trust me, it's much safer in my hands."

"Right…well, just keep it away from me," Stan said as he pulled his bed sheets over himself. "I only petted it once yesterday and that was it. I don't want that slimy thing touching me constantly." He turned on his side and placed his head back on his pillow. "Anyways, get some shut eye, Sixer. We still got another long day of driving tomorrow."

"Yes, yes," Ford acknowledged as stopped pressing buttons on Meridian and made his way back to his own bed on the other side of the room's middle nightstand. "We may make a stop at a store at some point tomorrow to pick up some batteries to give Meridian a small charge so I can access its basic features again. That way, we can also alert Dipper and Mabel of our approaching arrival. It's been some time since they've heard from us and they could be growing worried that we haven't kept in touch since we closed in on the Arctic Circle."

Upon hearing Dipper and Mabel's names, Stan's eyes suddenly bulged. "Are you sure you wanna do that, Sixer?" he asked, smiling sinisterly. "Rather than expecting us, I think those kids might appreciate a good  _surprise_."

"Maybe so," Ford somewhat agreed as he tucked himself into his own bed, not paying attention to Stan's facial expression. "But, it'd probably be nice for us alleviate them of any potential concerns of theirs. Let them know that we haven't died."

Stan narrowed his eyes at Ford as he frowned at this idea. " _Not yet_ ," he whispered.

"What was that?" Ford asked as he settled himself in bed, not catching what his brother had said.

Stan's frown faded away and he found himself looking at Ford in confusion. "Uh...what was what?"

"You said something, didn't you?" Ford asked as he glanced over at Stan with his head in his pillow.

"I...uh...I don't think so," Stan said, scratching his head. He suddenly didn't recall if they were even talking before.

"Huh. I thought I heard you say something," Ford said, somewhat confused. "Oh well." He then leaned over to the nightstand, taking off his glasses and setting them upon it. He then turned the lamp switch and shut it off before returning his head back to his pillow, shutting his eyes. "Good night, Stanley."

"Good night, Stanford," Stan returned as he shut his own eyes, turning his body to lay facing the ceiling.

Unbeknownst to him, his eyes flickered a yellow glow that illuminated through his eyelids as he attempted to sleep. Despite not seeing the glow itself, he felt the flicker in his eyes, which prompted him to open them and look up confused. He lifted his head up from his pillow a little bit and glanced around the room, particularly over at Ford's bed, but saw that he was just lying in his bed.

Not noticing anything else around the room, he promptly shrugged off the weird feeling that he had felt and laid back down on his bed. He pulled his sheets a bit closer as he stared up at the ceiling. Soon he began to drift off and his eyes shut again, unable to notice the yellow glow flickering through his eyelids yet again due to his deepening slumber.

* * *

At the same time in Gravity Falls, the Mystery Shack had already closed up for the day. But Soos and Wendy were still at work. They finished hanging up a banner in the museum that displayed a black silhouette of a haunted house over an orange background.

"How's this looking?" Wendy asked him.

Soos stepped down from his step ladder and looked up at the banner from the ground. Satisfied with its positioning, he smiled and gave her a thumbs up. "Looking wicked, dude." She gave him a thumbs up back before stepping down from her own step ladder, while Soos turned to a corner in the room. "How are things going over there, Ryland?"

In the corner, Ryland stood at a large table with an orange cover with black silhouettes of spiders, bats, and witches. There was a setup of empty punch and snack bowls, along with paper plates and plastic cups to the side. He then brushed off a spot in the middle of the table with his hand and promptly placed a watermelon on it. The watermelon had a carved face reminiscent of one on a jack-o-lantern.

"Looks like the snack table's pretty much done, boss," Ryland told Soos with a smile.

"Nice work, dude," Soos said as he walked over to him by the table.

"What else needs to get done?" he asked, just as Wendy began making her way over toward the two.

"Nothing, I think," Soos told him as he looked around the museum. "At least for today. But, I think the place is pretty much ready to go for Summerween tomorrow."

It was Thursday, June 16th, and the next day would be the second to last Friday of the month, the day Summerween takes place. In preparation, Soos, as always, decided to have the entire Shack decorated for the event. Similarly to how Stan used to decorate the place, he had the front decorated as a spooky graveyard, while also placing various banners around the exterior walls and the roof of the Shack. Meanwhile, the interior of the gift shop and the museum were similarly decorated with banners. There was also a lighting setup alongside a smoke machine for effects to be used the next night.

Soos wanted to throw a Summerween party at the Mystery Shack, figuring it would be a fun way to celebrate while also raking in a bunch of money, as per usual Mystery Shack event purposes.

"Hey, Melody!" Soos called out, turning toward the museum curtains. "Come check this out!"

Within the minute, Melody stepped through the curtains and walked into the museum. "What's up, bab-" she said, stopping herself short once she got a glimpse of all the decorations.

"What do you think, babe?" Soos asked, proudly looking around at the decorations with her. "We just finished decorating for Summerween."

"Oh my gosh, you guys," she said excitedly, happy with what she was seeing. "It all looks awesome!"

"Yeah," Wendy nodded in agreement. "The place looks great with all the new stuff bought instead of the same old, dusty Summerween supplies in the attic that Soos had us put up previous years."

"Haha, glad I wasn't here for that," Ryland chuckled.

"The Summerween Superstore ain't cheap, dude," Soos told the two. "Took a bit out of me to actually pay for these new decorations this year, especially since we're still recovering a bit from the whole newspaper deal. I'm not sure how Mr. Pines used to pay for this stuff."

"Um, Soos. He never paid for it," Wendy told him.

"Oh yeah," Soos realized, stroking his chin. "Well, I know what I'm doing next year. Or should I say...what I'm  _not_ doing. Heh," he chuckled as he nudged Ryland in the arm with his elbow.

"Have Dipper and Mabel seen the place yet?" Melody asked.

"I'm not sure they have," Soos replied as he thought about it.

"Have we seen what yet?" Mabel asked as her head suddenly popped through the curtains before she and Dipper both proceeded to step into the room.

"Whoa, that was some convenient timing you two just had," Soos pointed out.

"My Mabel-senses were tingling," Mabel told him. "They go off when they detect any sort of mention involving me and Dipper."

"They also go off when she detects nearby traces of pettable animals, candy, her favorite anime, romantic comedy movie trailers, and the mailman," Dipper added.

"They're the ones who deliver my fashion-designing supplies! Of course I get overly excited when I receive mail!" Mabel explained that last addition. Suddenly, she gasped once her eyes caught sight of how the museum was decorated. "WAIT A MINUTE! Spooky decorations? Jack-O-Melons? Dare I ask- IT'S SUMMERWEEN?!"

"Tomorrow, hambone," Soos nodded. "We just finished decorating the Shack today."

"Wait, Summerween's tomorrow? Already?" Dipper asked, confused by this revelation. "I thought it was later in the month."

"It's the second to last Friday of the month," Wendy explained. "The last year you guys celebrated it with us, it was on the 22nd. It's almost a week earlier this year because the month ends on a Thursday. But don't worry. It might be kinda jarring for you two, but it's still the same ol' holiday you remember."

"You think they find it jarring? This is my first Summerween," Ryland told her. "I mean, a town that celebrates Halloween twice in one year? Who would've thought?"

"Oh my gosh, you're gonna love it!" Mabel said as she quickly walked up to him and placed her hand on his shoulder. "It's pretty much exactly like Halloween, but better and more Summer-y!"

"So... _not_  exactly like Halloween then?" Ryland asked, confused by Mabel's wording.

"I said pretty much," Mabel replied.

"Fair enough," Ryland shrugged as he smiled at her.

There was a sudden knock at the gift shop door, grabbing everyone's attention.

"Huh, what's somebody doing here at this time?" Melody asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, we already closed up hours ago," Soos added.

Being closest to the gift shop and, with that, the door, Dipper proceeded to walk back out of the museum and up to the door. He promptly, yet cautiously, placed his hand on the knob and opened it up, finding himself coming face to face with someone he hadn't seen in a good while.

"What's going on, Dipper?" asked his best friend, Derrick Mendez.

"Derrick!" Dipper exclaimed with a smile. The two proceeded to engage in their handshake, slapping their palms and the back of their hands against one another's before ending on a fist bump. "Dude, where have you been? We haven't seen you since the whole deal with the gnomes."

"Well, once I realized my own stupidity from that adventure almost got me incinerated by a dragon, I needed some time to...uh...recover," Derrick explained to him. "In other words, I was traumatized and I needed help after that night."

"Yeesh, and I thought you were joking about that," Dipper said, scratching the back of his neck. "Are you alright?"

"Nope," Derrick flat out admitted. "But I'm here for once."

"Yeah...at, like, 9 PM," Dipper reminded him.

"I was in the area," Derrick revealed. "What's the issue? It doesn't look like you've been sleeping."

"No issue at all. Just a very sudden visit is all," Dipper clarified for him.

"Hey Dipper!" Mabel's voice intervened from behind him as she made his way over. "Who's at the do- awww, man..." she groaned upon sight of Derrick.

"Hello to you too, Sparkles," Derrick told her with an eye roll.

"I thought the reason you hadn't been showing up was that you died," Mabel told him. "Not that I wish that had happened..."

"Well, I do," Derrick replied grimly.

"Yeesh, that's dark," Mabel said as she began backing up into the museum again. "Even for me."

She walked back into the museum, leaving the two on their own again. Derrick turned back to Dipper. "I will say, what's up with the graveyard get-up out here? Did someone forget to put away their Halloween decorations?"

"Heh, funny enough, those are just the Shack's Summerween decorations for tomorrow," Dipper told him with a light chuckle.

"Summerween?" Derrick asked, raising his eyebrow.

"It's a thing around here," Dipper began. "The town loves Halloween so much that they celebrate it twice a year. That second time being Summerween, which, like I said, is tomorrow. And Soos is planning a party here."

"A town that celebrates Halloween twice a year, huh?" Derrick restated as he stroked his chin. "Who would've thought?"

"That's exactly what Ryland said," Dipper said with a chuckle. "Speaking of, you wanna come inside and join us?"

"I'm good," Derrick said, shaking his head. "Like I said, I was only in the area and just wanted to see what's up. I gotta head back to my granddad's place though."

"Alright, dude," Dipper said as he prepared to close the door. "Well, I'll see you around."

"Wait," Derrick halted him. "While I'm still here, I figured I'd bring up something."

"What's up?"

"Well, the trauma aside, I do think that whole gnome-dragon adventure was kinda thrilling," Derrick admitted. "And you know, if that's the type of stuff you guys do around here, maybe I can along with you guys more often?"

"I mean, of course, man," Dipper said. "We're best friends, aren't we? I figured that us hanging out would be a given since you came here."

"Well, yeah. But that was before I gave into the weirdness and all the crazy things you told me about that I never believed," Derrick specified. "Monster hunts and such. I think I'd like doing more of that type of thing."

"Well, it's not like we're always searching for things trying to kill us," Dipper told him. "Most of the things we come across just cross our paths naturally, with an occasional mission every now and then," he explained. "All you'd really have to do is just hang out with us more and you'll probably get dragged into another weird adventure."

"Can I?"

"Sure thing, bro," Dipper said with a smile. "Now that you know I'm not crazy and the things I've been telling you are true, facing more of that type of stuff with my best bud from Piedmont would be great. Plus, I'm sure the others would love to have you along."

" _EHEM!_ " Mabel's voice exclaimed from inside.

"Except Mabel," Dipper added without even taking a second to look back. "Although I figured that was a given."

"Well, alright then," Derrick settled with a smile. "The bros from Piedmont, making it real in Gravity Falls."

"You know it," Dipper said as he fist-bumped Derrick. "Just maybe try to call ahead of time in the future."

"No phone, bro. Remember?" Derrick reminded him of his dad's 'no phone' punishment in addition to him being cast off to Gravity Falls.

"Oh right," Dipper realized.

"It's whatever. I'll try not to abuse when I'm welcome and when I'm not," Derrick said as he walked off the porch, beginning to head on his way. He turned back to Dipper. "That said, you told me there's a party tomorrow, so expect to see me earlier. I don't want to miss any potential action on a day where a weird town has a weird celebration."

"Heh, alright, man," Dipper chuckled, waving off to Derrick as he went on his way. "See you tomorrow."

Watching him go off on his way, Dipper proceeded to shut the door. He then turned around and got a look at the rest of the gift shop, which he had no chance to closely examine before. But now that he looked at it, he was able to see the time and effort that Soos had been putting into the place this year. With how much detail he was able to put into the decoration of the Shack compared to how someone like Stan would cheaply put together was admirable. Despite the Shack maintaining its usual tourist trap and fake attraction routine under his name, he seemed to have a lot of heart for the business.

It was odd, of course, but admirable.

And Summerween. A holiday that he didn't even begin to think about, considering that it was days earlier in the month this year than it was in 2012. But it was here already.

Being sixteen, nearing seventeen in two months, the consequences of growing older had begun to strike as the years passed. He hadn't gone trick-or-treating with Mabel since they were thirteen. However, that didn't mean they didn't celebrate Halloween.

Upon entering high school, Mabel became a Halloween party planner, throwing a grand costume party for the school yearly. While trick-or-treating became a bit more of a childish concept, albeit still not uncommon, the idea of getting together with all of her friends in costumes and throwing a big bash was something everyone could get down with. Although she never considered the parties to be a better replacement to trick-or-treating, she enjoyed them as a more mature replacement (although she had promised Dipper that she would be back in the trick-or-treat game once she was an adult with twenty kids so she could show them who's boss).

Dipper didn't mind not trick-or-treating anymore, and accepted the party change fine. He was just happy to continue to dress up alongside his sister in a various fun, twin ways. And with Mabel's knowledge of dressing up evolving as she gained more designing abilities, their costumes became more clever and impressive over the years.

Just last year, the two considered doing Star Wars characters. However, it was somewhat tricky at first due to the need to avoid the obvious implications were they to choose any of the three original leads. They then settled on the idea of having Mabel dress as Han, whereas Dipper dressed as Chewbacca, to which Mabel cleverly blended his scruffy brown hair with the rest of his costume. It ended up working quite well, and they ended up getting best costume pair, as they always did due to Mabel's make-up and design expertise.

Apart from being forced to make growling noises constantly that night, he still thought it was plenty of fun. The fact that they were still able to make such great Halloween memories even when they were growing too old to trick-or-treat amazed him.

"Summerween, huh?" he said to himself, wondering what their second Summerween was about to have in store for them.

"I know, right?" Mabel said, her head suddenly popping from behind the register counter, startling Dipper.

"The hell?! I thought you were in the museum!" Dipper exclaimed, trying to recover from his scare.

"Oh, Dipper," she said playfully as she hopped onto the counter, sitting down. "Haven't you learned by now that I'm everywhere and anywhere? Watching your every move?"

"That'd be really disturbing and wrong if that was true," Dipper pointed out, internally cringing in disgust as he thought about it.

"Yeah, it would," Mabel agreed with a chuckle due to his reaction. "Nah, but seriously, you've been here alone in silence for like five minutes just staring off and smiling before you started talking to yourself," she told him. "That's almost as disturbing, honestly."

"I'm just looking around," Dipper told her as he pointed out the decorations. "Reminiscing in those old Halloween days."

"Those were the good times, weren't they?" Mabel said with a smile as she looked around as well. "It's been three Halloweens since we last went trick-or-treating." She looked down somewhat glumly and sighed. "Guess all that talk last Summerween about not having a lot of Halloweens left for it was just as true as we thought."

"I guess," Dipper said as he thought back to it. "But hey, that doesn't mean these past few Halloweens haven't been great in their own right. I mean, we may not be wheel barreling candy around the entire neighborhood, but you've still been getting just as sugared up with that fruit punch you always make for your parties. You still start every November off with a sugar hangover."

"Yeah, that's true," Mabel nodded. "But still. It just feels like something's been missing these past few Halloweens. Even the last time we went trick-or-treating after our summer here. It felt empty."

"Well, to be fair, it was raining that night," Dipper reminded her.

"That's not what I meant," Mabel denied. "I mean the magic that made Halloween so special wasn't there like it was all those years before."

"Maybe it's because we're growing up?" Dipper suggested.

Mabel stared forward for a second to think of this before sighing. "Could that really be it?"

"I don't know," Dipper admitted. "Maybe. I just don't see what 'magic' you might be referring to."

"I guess it's complicated," Mabel admitted as she hopped off the counter and leaned her back against it beside Dipper. She then worked a smile as another thought came to mind. "Maybe this Summerween could be different. I mean, our last Summerween was everything we could've wanted. Maybe we'll get that again this year. We won't be trick-or-treating, but we're back in Gravity Falls. Back with all our old friends and…"

She stopped herself short once she realized what she was about to say. Her eyes narrowed sadly again as she glanced over at a wall behind the register. On it, there was a picture frame that held an image of their great uncles, Stan and Ford, who stood smiling for the picture. A caption was on the bottom of the frame, reading 'Founders (well, one of them)'. Mabel walked over to it and picked it down from the wall and looked at it in her hands.

"...family."

Dipper walked over to her, looking down at the image over her shoulder. He frowned glumly, feeling empathy for her missing their great uncles.

"If Grunkle Stan was here right now, he'd be planning on how he was going to scare the trick-or-treaters tomorrow," Mabel said glumly.

"And if Great Uncle Ford was here right now, he'd probably be building some machine that prevents cavities and tooth decay so we wouldn't have issues eating all the candy we want," Dipper added.

Mabel sighed. "They said they'd be back before the end of the month. We're already over halfway through June. Should we be worried?"

"No, what?" Dipper questioned with a somewhat nervous chuckle. "Mabel, this Grunkle Stan and Great Uncle Ford we're talking about. I'm sure they're fine."

Still unsure, Mabel took out her cell phone from her back pocket. "I'm gonna try to start a video call with them." She pressed a button to call on the screen, patiently waiting as it started to ring. However, after a few rings, the call hung up due to no response. "Nothing…"

"Again, who knows what they might be up to?" Dipper said, trying to coax her. "They could still be in the Arctic Circle looking for the alien-like activity like they told us before. They might not have a signal strong enough to be able to call."

"Are you seriously not worried about them at all?" Mabel asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

"I didn't say that! I'm just…" Dipper began somewhat panicked at Mabel's sudden assumption before stopping himself. He sighed before dejectedly looking back up at her. "Of course I'm worried. They're our family, and I have a lot of faith in them. But I know they're not invincible. Anything could happen to them out there."

Mabel sighed as she placed the picture on the counter, turning to Dipper. "I know we still have an entire summer ahead of us. And the bit of summer that has already passed has been great. I love hanging out with all our old friends and the new ones we've made. But our Grunkles were one of the main reasons we came back, and while we've been doing okay without them, it just hasn't been the same."

"Yeah," Dipper nodded at her as he stuffed his hands in his hoodie pockets. "It really hasn't."

"I just hope they're okay," Mabel said as she looked on at the picture on the counter.

"Me too, sis," Dipper said as he stepped beside her to look at the picture on the counter. He placed his hand on her shoulder comfortingly. "Me too…"

* * *

Ford continued to lay peacefully in his bed, his snoring filling the silence of the night darkness. Although he was sleeping soundly, he wasn't a heavy sleeper. Not unless he was tired, which he wasn't all that much at that moment. Which meant that something as small as a small breeze in the night was able to grab his attention.

He had turned in his bed, and such a breeze blew against his face. He shivered at that moment, his snoring stopped as his attention became conscious again. He pulled the sheets over himself more to further cover up, but it didn't help. He felt another cool wind brush up against his face.

 _The AC must be too low_ , he figured.

He opened his eyes slightly as he pulled himself up in bed. He then rubbed his eyes to somewhat alleviate them of his tired feelings. He then leaned over to the nightstand and grabbed his glasses, putting them on. Now able to see, his eyes darted to his left and his attention was suddenly drawn to the open door of the hotel room. Not too far from it, there was a street dog of some sort cautiously sniffing his backpack, which he had placed on the floor against the room's TV set.

"GAH!" he exclaimed, startled by the sight of a street dog in their room.

His startled scream sent the dog running back out of the room fearfully. Taking a second to calm down and process the fact the door was open, he raised an eyebrow in confusion. He had no idea why the door had been open, considering he had made sure to lock it before going to bed.

Suddenly, as he glanced around the room from his bed, he realized something.

"Stanley?"

No response.

Ford looked over at Stan's bed and noticed that there was a lump under the bedsheets. However, it was hard to identify it in a dark room. And so he got up from his bed and proceeded to walk over to his.

"Stanley? Wake up," he said as he placed his hands on the lump on the bed.

However, he was able to quickly tell that the lump didn't feel right. His hands sunk into the lump with a feeling of softness. After feeling around the bed a bit more, he put his hand on the covers and pulled them off the lump. Despite the darkness, the outdoor moonlight illuminated the room just enough for him to tell that in its place laid a bunch of the motel's pillows. Ford instantly started to grow anxious at this discovery.

"Stanley?!" he called out through the room. He turned back toward the open door and ran over to it. He placed his hands on the doorway as he stuck his head outside, quickly glancing around for Stan. "STANLEY?!"

After a second, his eyes caught the back of Stan's nightwear, spotting him walking aimlessly through the motel parking lot.

"There you are!" Ford called out as he caught Stan walking, letting out a quick sigh of relief before becoming instantly confused as to why Stan was even outside in the first place. "What the hell are you doing out here? Do you know what time it is?"

Stan didn't respond, however. He kept walking straight through the lot without even taking a second to look back or pay any mind to Ford. Seeing him continue making his way toward the main road, Ford started to grow even more confused.

"Stan, did you hear me?!" Ford called out again, beginning to speed-walk after him. However, Stan continued to not react. "Hello? Stanley?"

Stan continued to ignore him as he began to walk onto the sidewalk next to the lot beside one of the main roads. Then, he stopped walking and stood still in place. He appeared as though he was waiting to cross the street. However, there were no cars actively driving by at that moment.

"Are you ignoring me?" Ford asked as he continued to slowly catch up to Stan. "Dammit, Stan! I know you can hear me!"

Ford was weirded out by Stan's odd behavior, which has been consistently growing weirder since they left the Arctic. But now, he wasn't even speaking back to him at all.

As he continued to contemplate reasons for Stan's behavior, he suddenly heard the screeching tires of a nearby speeding vehicle. He stopped walking and looked left of the main road, spotting a speeding truck that just turned a corner onto the street ahead. As it continued at its fast speed, Ford glanced back at Stan, who was walking closer toward the edge of the sidewalk.

Things clicked, and his heart dropped at that moment as he proceeded to start running over to him. "STANLEY!  _NOO!_ "

Stan stood on the edge of the sidewalk, patiently waiting as the truck continued speeding, the driver unaware of what his next plans were. As soon as it made close enough contact, Stan made a leap onto the road in front of it.

However, his distance was immediately cut short as Ford quickly dove his hand forward, grabbing ahold of the back neck of his sleeveless white shirt and pulling him back onto the sidewalk with all of his strength. The driver was caught off guard by Stan's actions and began swerving for a moment as he continued driving down the road past the two without hurting anybody.

Ford felt as though his heart was beating at a couple thousand miles per hour, even though he knew that was impossible. He glanced to the side and saw Stan picking himself off of the ground, dusting himself off. Ford then picked himself off the ground as well and grabbed ahold of his brother's shoulders angrily.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?!" Ford exclaimed in his face, tearing up slightly.

"I…" Stan tried to say.

"WHY WOULD YOU TRY TO DO THAT?!" Ford berated. "WHY WOULD YOU EVEN  _THINK_  ABOUT TRYING TO DO THAT?!"

"What are you-"

"DO YOU KNOW HOW FAR WE'VE COME?!" Ford continued to rant angrily. "ARE YOU SERIOUSLY GONNA THROW IT ALL THE WAY IN FRONT OF YOUR OWN FAMILY?!"

"Ford, listen-"

"Is this about mom?!" Ford cut off again, calming down his voice a little bit.

"What?! Ford, I…"

Ford then cut him off with a very sudden hug. "For Christ's sake, Stanley," he said tearfully. "I miss her too, but hell, even  _I_  know she wouldn't want this if she still remembered us. I know you're upset, but this isn't the answer, Stanley. This  _isn't_  the answer."

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!" Stan asked frustratedly as he pushed Ford away from him. "What is this?! Why would I do what?! What has to do with mom?! Why are you hugging me and getting emotional for no reason?!" he asked Ford in complete and utter confusion. He then glanced around at their surroundings and noticed that they were outside. "And most importantly, why in the hell are we not in our room?!"

"What?!" Ford asked, now getting frustrated himself. "Stan, I just saw you try to jump in front of a speeding truck!"

"What? Why would I do that?!" Stan asked, completely appalled by this possibility.

"You...don't remember?" Ford asked, frustration fading away as his concern began to grow.

"No! The last thing I remember was falling asleep!" Stan told him. "Then I woke up right here, with you screaming and yelling at me!"

"Because my own brother had just jumped in front of a truck!" Ford exclaimed. "Do you know how close you were to getting yourself killed?!"

"Again, Ford. I don't remember any of this," Stan reminded him.

"How do you not remember?" Ford asked in complete disbelief. "I just pulled you away from a speeding truck and saved your life! And you're trying to say that you 'woke up' right here on the sidewalk beside me as if you potentially sleepwalked through everything else?"

Stan started rubbing his eyes, unsure how to answer. "Ya know what, Ford, I really don't know."

"You're rubbing your eyes again," Ford noticed aloud.

"Yeah, because I'm tired!" Stan said, glancing back Ford. However, despite this statement, Ford was able to see that Stan's eyes had suddenly become bloodshot again. His concern for his brother began to grow even stronger.

"Um...Stanley?" he said as he began to reach his hand out to him.

"I'm tired, Sixer," Stan said as he began to walk back toward the motel room. He placed his hand on the side of his head and rubbed it as he started to stumble. "And I'm feeling sorta dizzy…"

"Dizzy?" Ford repeated to himself as his eyes focused on Stan's stumbling movement. He knew something was wrong.

"So let's just get back to the motel room and get some…" Stan said before he suddenly stopped walking, swaying dizzily in place. "G-Get some…"

"Stan? Are you okay?" Ford asked as he began to walk up to his brother again, noticing his dizzy swaying.

Before he could answer, Stan began leaning forward until he suddenly collapsed on the ground. His eyes twitched open for a moment before shutting, knocking him out.

"STANLEY!" he exclaimed as he ran to Stan's side, crouching down beside him on the ground. He placed his hands on his chest and began shaking him back and forth. "STAN!"

Receiving no response, he promptly put his ear against his chest. He heard a normal heartbeat, signifying that he hadn't died. He then put the back of his hand against the side of his face, feeling the intense heat of a potential fever. And a bad one.

It was clear at that point that Stan needed help and fast. With his wristwatch still dead and unable to make phone calls at that moment, Ford desperately glanced back and forth between the parking lot and his brother frantically.

"HELP!" he called out desperately. "SOMEBODY! I NEED HELP!"

He looked back down at his brother, placing the back of his hand against his face again. He couldn't tell exactly since he had just done it, but it had felt like his face had become even warmer. There were many things going through his head at that moment to be able to process a clear thought, however, and so he didn't think too much about it. His brother was sick and needed medical treatment immediately. And that's what was important at the moment.

"Hold on, Stanley. You're gonna be alright," Ford told him as he placed his hand on his chest, verifying there was still a heartbeat present. "I sure hope so…"

 


	25. Stan-doff: Part 2

"Hmm…" a doctor said curiously as he skimmed a piece of paper on a clipboard.

In front of the doctor was Stan, who sat up awake in his hospital bed. He wore a hospital gown instead of his nightly outfit, which was standard procedure. His eyes were no longer bloodshot and he generally looked healthy in appearance. Ford sat in a chair right beside his bed, dressed back in his normal outfit as opposed to his own nightwear.

Since their arrival in the hospital, Stan had undergone basic tests for his condition. The doctor had come back with the results, reading them in his head as the Stan twins patiently waited for an explanation.

"Well, according to these test results, it doesn't appear like there's anything wrong with you, Mr. Pines," the doctor said, letting go of the sheet of paper, looking back up at Stan.

"What?" Ford said, chiming in before Stan could. "That can't be possible. I saw him collapse right in front of me. He even had a fever!"

The doctor stood up and inserted an ear thermometer in Stan's left ear, catching by surprise for a second.

"Hey, hey!" he exclaimed, jolting his head a bit. "How about a little warning?"

The thermometer beeped, and the doctor promptly pulled it out. He inspected the number, which read a perfect 98.6 temperature. He then looked back at his clipboard.

"Well, our initial temperature checks do confirm a very high fever of 103.7, his temperature now is...perfect," the doctor told them. "And the rest of our tests don't present any sort of basic issues. Normal heart rate, normal blood sugar, a little overweight but that doesn't appear to present any issue either. Everything on the surface just appears normal. Especially since his temperature has lowered since, perhaps this was all a result of heat exhaustion or dehydration?"

"That can't be," Ford denied. "It can't be that simple. This was at night with no sun. His eyes were all red and this wasn't the first time."

"You mean he's collapsed like this before?" the doctor asked.

"What? No," Ford shook his head. "I meant the red eyes."

"I see," the doctor nodded, stroking his chin. "Well, if there truly is anything wrong, it's going to require more thorough testing. Perhaps an MRI."

"What? No, no, no," Stan shook his head in refusal. "That's not necessary."

"Of course, it's necessary! Stanley, you're unwell," Ford argued.

"I'm  _fine_ ," Stan assured him. "Really. I feel great! Like a new man. My muscles feel strong and my head feels good! Trust me. Whatever happened to me a few hours ago doesn't compare to me now."

"I'm glad you feel that way, Mr. Pines," the doctor told him. "But just to be safe, we're going to hold onto you overnight. Just in case anything happens again, we'll be ready to take care of it."

"Aw, c'mon! I gotta keep wearing this paper dress for the rest of the night?" Stan complained unhappily, not appreciating the discomfort of the hospital gown.

"He'll deal with it, doctor," Ford told him while also giving Stan a look to cut it out. "But if I may, can I please have a moment alone with my brother?"

"Of course," the doctor nodded before leaving the two, shutting the curtains behind him.

Upon being left alone, Stan laid himself back again in his reclined hospital bed, sighing with discontent. "Great. As if we haven't waited long enough to get back to Gravity Falls. Now I'm gonna have to stay here overnight only for them to find nothing."

"Actually, Stan, I've been doing some thinking," Ford said as he brought his chair closer to Stan, bringing his volume down a bit since their only walls were the thin curtains that surrounded them. "And I feel like a fool for not bringing this up earlier, but I feel like I know what might be causing this."

"Let me guess," Stan said, thinking about it. "It was the gas station sandwich I had for lunch, right? Ya know, I was starting to feel kinda funny after that. And I remember reading somewhere that you shouldn't eat food from gas stations."

"Um...no, that's not it," Ford replied somewhat awkwardly. "Stan, do you remember what happened back in the Arctic? With Bill's Nightmare Realm friends? Anything at all?"

"I remember riding a giant two horned rhinoceros or something down a mountain if that's what you're talking about," Stan told him. "Why?"

Ford sighed, knowing things would be too complicated to explain. "Well, they did something to you back there. They took the energy of the multiversal rift that was in the mountain and amplified it with a stream of ongoing electricity for a good few minutes while using a metal bed you were strapped to as a conductor."

"And uh...what does that do to me?" Stan asked, growing concerned about his well-being with this revelation.

"To be completely honest, I'm unsure," Ford admitted. "But considering you've been acting strange ever since…the short-term memory, overly aggressive behavior, especially by your standards..."

"Ah, please, Ford. That all just sounds like the typical behavior of an aging man, which I am," Stan brushed off. "Maybe the doc is right. I haven't been drinking much water this whole trip. Probably just a bit dehydrated. Nothing to be concerned about."

"Stan, you can't seriously be blowing this all aside like it's nothing," Ford told him with a serious look. "I truly believe there could be something dangerously wrong with you. We need to figure out what and I know how. I have some equipment back in my lab in the Shack's basement that we can use to do a quicker and more thorough scan of your body than any of these hospitals or MRIs can find after a month's wait for results."

Stan thought for a moment, thinking about his final claim. "You're not kidding about that wait for test results."

"I've had it with the waiting for anything, Stanley," Ford told him as he stood up from his chair. "In fact, before taking you to the hospital, I checked us out of the motel we were staying out. As soon as we get out of here, we're getting back on the road again and are finishing this drive to Gravity Falls."

"I'm with you," Stan said with a nod. "But, uh, didn't the doc say they're gonna keep me overnight?"

"Uh...yes…" Ford nodded with a look of uncertainty. "About that though...because of your banned status here in Wyoming, I had to come up with fake names and payment info just to get us in here. It's only a matter of time before they find out about-"

"Hey, sorry to interrupt, you two," the doctor suddenly interrupted, poking his upper body through the curtains with a clipboard in hand. He glanced over at Ford. "Mr. Gerald Pines, we tried using the credit card number you gave us so we could charge you for the visit, but the number appears to be invalid. Any chance you can review it with us in case we made a mistake?"

Ford stared at the doctor with bulged eyes of fear and growing nervousness. Stan then suddenly grabbed him by his collar and pulled his face close to his, giving him an angry look.

"Fake name?!" he whispered frustratedly at him. "Did you seriously keep the same last name and only change the first? Are you seriously  _that_  bad at this kinda thing?!"

"Well, I'm  _sorry_  that I'm not an expert criminal like you," Ford whispered back defensively.

"You told me you were wanted throughout the multiverse! I thought that meant you had picked up some skills in that portal!" Stan whispered back frustratedly.

"Um...is there a problem here?" the doctor asked awkwardly as he just hovered over the Stans quietly bickering with one another.

Ford pulled himself away from Stan's grasp and gave the doctor a nervous smile. "No, no problem at all. We're just discussing the payment number is all!"

"Yeah, and about that…" Stan continued as he dug around under his hospital bed sheets.

At that moment, Stan quickly dug out a smoke bomb and threw it violently against the ground in front of the doctor. It blew up right in his face, creating a thick ball of smoke that blinded him as it completely took over his face. He began coughing and sputtering within the smoke, waving his hands around to wind it away. He started to recover his ability to see as the smoke cleared up. He turned to his left and immediately spotted Ford running through the hospital corridor while pushing Stan's mobile hospital bed.

"RUN FOR- I mean, RUN GERALD!" Stan exclaimed as he rode in the hospital bed that Ford was pushing behind him.

Several other doctors had noticed the commotion with the smoke bomb and looked over at the corridor the Stans were moving through as they turned a corner. The doctor they had blinded at first narrowed his eyes angrily.

"DON'T LET THOSE TWO GET AWAY!" he ordered the other doctors surrounding before beginning to chase after them. With that command, several other doctors ran along with him to chase the Stan brothers.

Ford had a good lead on the doctors, but he knew it wouldn't last long, as they didn't have the bearing of having to push a hospital bed around. Still, he ran and pushed Stan through the hospitals with all of his force, trying his hardest not to accidentally run into anything that would stump his progress.

The doctor wasn't lying about Stan's weight though. He may have been pushing him on wheels, but the bed definitely felt heavier to push than he thought it should have.

"Keep pushing, Sixer!" Stan told him as he sat up on the bed, watching cautiously ahead of them.

"By the way...where exactly were you keeping that smoke bomb in your gown?" Ford asked him, the thought suddenly coming to mind.

"Trust me. You don't wanna know," Stan answered, prompting a confused look from Ford. "Just focus on pushing! I'll watch ahead!"

"What's up ahead?" Ford asked, trying to peek his head to the side to look.

Stan turned his head forward ahead of the corridor they were traveling through and quickly caught sight of a doctor pushing a trolley bed across the corridor. The speed Ford was pushing at was quickly beginning to close the distance between them and the doctor, and he didn't seem to be aware that he was about run right into him.

"Swerve right!" Stan called out to his brother.

Ford did as commanded and swerved the bed to the right, which sent them turning around a corner right in front of the doctor and his trolley. He stopped, preventing himself from suddenly running into the Pines. He stared at them silently as they ran off, wondering what was going on. His confusion only increased upon seeing several doctors from his right come rushing through the hallway and proceeding to turn ahead of him to chase the Pines.

As Stan and Ford continued running through the corridor, Ford took a second to look behind him and noticed the pursuing doctors.

"Stan! They're gaining on us!" he called out as he turned back ahead.

"Alright…uh…" he said, trying to come up with a potential solution. He looked forward and noticed a cart ahead with some various medicines placed against the left wall. He had an idea. "Move me a bit to the left!"

Ford carefully did so as he tried to keep up their current speed while trying to put more emphasis on moving the bed leftward, which was a slight struggle. Nonetheless, he managed, and Stan began to lean his arms left in his bed as they got closer to the cart. As soon as they passed it, he quickly got a hold of two pill containers. He proceeded to bite off both covers at the same time before getting on his knees and turning to face the doctors behind them.

"Mr. Pines! We urge you and your brother to think about what you're doing!" Stan's doctor called out to him as he chased him. "We're trying to help you! If you pay for our services, you can stay overnight and if we find something wrong with you, we can prescribe you the proper medication or other possible treatments for your condition!"

"Oh yeah? Well, prescribe this!" Stan exclaimed as he proceeded to empty out both pill containers with the single swing of his arms. The pills came bouncing against the floor until they rolled right underneath the feet of the doctors, causing them to slip and fall to the ground.

With the doctors delayed, the Stans whooped at their success as they continued running through the hall, eventually turning yet another corner, leaving the doctors' sights.

"Nice work, Stanley!" Ford called out as he kept running. "Now to find a way out of here!"

Stan sat back down on the bed and faced forward ahead of them. Right down at the end of the corridor was a large elevator, presumably built for bringing trolleys up and down the floors. "Well, we're in luck! Elevator straight ahead, Sixer!"

"Perfect!" Ford exclaimed with a smile as he picked up his pace a bit more.

The two soon reached the elevator at the end of the corridor. Ford stepped away from the back of the bed and walked to the button panel, pressing the down button. The door didn't open right away, however, basically signifying they had to wait for it to show up. This brought stress to Ford, as he realized the wait would give the doctors a chance to catch up.

And right on cue, Ford turned behind him to notice that the doctors had just turned the corner from the other end of the corridor that they had just run.

"They're taking the elevator!" one of the doctors' voices exclaimed as they began running after them again.

"Oh c'mon…" Ford said worriedly, pressing the elevator button multiple times as he began to panic.

"Ford?" Stan asked in a concerned tone as he peeked his head behind the bed to see the doctors beginning to catch up to their position. "Ya know that just because I'm in a hospital bed doesn't mean I can't walk, right? We should think about going for the stairs."

_Ding!_

At that moment, the elevator doors had opened, prompting Ford to smile in slight relief.

"Too late!" Ford exclaimed as he ran behind the bed again and pushed it into the elevator. As he stepped inside beside the bed, he reached for the button panel and pressed the button to go to the 1st floor.

"NO! STOP THEM!" Stan's doctor shouted as he and the other doctors came close to catching up to them.

At that moment, Ford rapidly pressed the button to close the elevator doors over and over, sweat beginning to balm on his forehead. The doctors soon reached the elevator, but they were stumped by the shutting of the doors, to which the Stan twins were now on their way to the first floor.

"DAMMIT!" Stan's doctor yelled in frustration, frustratedly banging the metal elevator doors with his fist. He looked back at the other doctors and pointed over at a set of doors labeled 'Staircase'. "Take the stairs! Beat them to the bottom floor! Don't, under any circumstances, let those two get away!"

* * *

Inside the elevator, Stan continued to sit in the mobile hospital bed as Ford stood right beside him, mentally planning their escape to their car upon the elevator doors opening again. However, his mental processes were soon disturbed when he heard a noise coming from Stan, who was humming along with the elevator music.

"Hmmm...mm...mm... _bore..._ hmmm...mmm...mmm... _door…_ " Stan hummed aloud. "... _gonna show them the dance floor…_ " His eyes then glanced over at Ford, who was staring at him weirdly. "What? It's a catchy song."

Ford just sighed in response. He then found himself unable to retrace his former thoughts and just stared forward waiting for the elevator ride to finish.

_Ding!_

The elevator doors opened up again, and Stan and Ford stood frozen in place as they were immediately greeted by all the doctors from upstairs. The doctors surrounded the two on the elevator, leaving them with no way to get through. Right beside them was a single police officer, who was also standing defensively among the rest of the doctors.

"Aha! We got you now!" Stan's doctor exclaimed to the two. "Now we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You can provide your payment info and stay or leave as you please, or you'll have to deal with the police. What's it going to be?"

Stan and Ford stared at the doctors and the officer fearfully, not moving a muscle. They glanced at one another once before looking forward again. Then, without a word, Ford casually moved his hand over to the button panel and pressed a single button, prompting the elevator doors to close again.

The doctors and single officer simply stared on at the closed elevator doors in silence. Stan's doctor's eye twitched upon realization of what just happened.

"Well...crap," he said before standing up straight again. "Well, people. Upstairs again it is. Let's get moving!" The doctors groaned in response, not thrilled by the idea of running back upstairs again. "Yeah, yeah! Moan all you want! It ain't gonna help our paychecks."

The doctors and officer proceeded to all make their way back to the staircase, though much slower than before due to the lack of want to be going up and down the stairs again. Soon after, the doors to the staircase closed behind the last doctor and the elevator was left undefended.

At that moment, the elevator doors opened again with Stan and Ford still inside, with Ford's finger held on the button panel. Ford then poked his head out of the elevator and glanced around, searching for any doctors or other security.

"Huh. I wasn't expecting simply closing the elevator doors and waiting it out to actually work," Ford said, not finding anymore doctors waiting for them.

"You're telling me that they all went back upstairs for us without leaving anyone down here in case we'd come back?" Stan asked. "Yikes. Not a hospital I'd want 'helping' me."

"C'mon," Ford said as he moved behind the bed again and began pushing Stan out of the elevator. "Let's just get out while the coast is clear."

The two casually made their way away from the elevator and out of the building without any further trouble from any doctors or security. Ford rolled Stan out into the parking lot and over to his car, which was parked in the back of the lot. Before reaching it, Ford urged Stan to get off the bed, to which he then pushed the bed on its wheels into the middle of the lot for it to be taken back by the hospital whenever they got around to it.

"It was really nice of ya to roll me around, Sixer. I wasn't feeling like doing the running myself," Stan joked at the fact that Ford needlessly continued to roll Stan out of the hospital on the bed despite his legs working fine.

"Funny," Ford said sarcastically as he began walking over to his car. "But honestly, I'm sure me pushing your 'slightly overweight' body around was a faster choice anyway."

"Alright, don't go quoting idiotic doctors on me now," Stan told him as he followed with his smile wearing off with Ford's comeback.

In the backseat of Ford's car, the Snacken sat waiting. Its tentacles hung out over the seat's edge, swinging occasionally out of boredom. However, once it heard the two brothers conversing outside, it perked up. It crawled up the seat and looked outside, noticing the twins approaching. Growing excited, it promptly jumped onto the right window, just as Stan approached that side of the car.

"GAH!" he exclaimed, caught off guard by the Snacken's presence. "What the hell? Ford, you left that damn octopus in the car?!"

"I left a window cracked open for it," Ford addressed, pointing over to the slightly opened window at the front of the car as he entered the driver's seat.

"No, I mean you brought that thing along with us? Why?" Stan asked, not thrilled by the idea of the Snacken still tagging along on their ride home. He hopped into the passenger seat beside Ford and closed the car door behind him. The Snacken then jumped and wrapped its tentacles around the head of his seat, catching him by surprise. "Hey, hey!"

"Easy!" Ford shouted at the Snacken, using his arm to gesture for it to get off of Stan's seat. It listened to his command and jumped back into the seat behind him. "Anyway, I brought  _everything_  along with us. Remember, I checked us out from the motel."

"Oh, right," Stan remembered, cautiously resting his head against the back of his car seat. "So we're really doing this final run back home, huh?"

"That we are," Ford said as he adjusted the rearview mirror at the front.

"Well, what're we waiting for?" Stan said excitedly. "Let's get a move on!"

"We will," Ford said as his eye glanced over at Stan, scanning him very quickly before looking away. "Although, before we do, Stanley- since we're out of the hospital now, and as long as we're parked here and your stuff is in the backseat...can you please do us both a favor and put on some pants?"

Stan's eyes glanced down at his lower half and quickly noticed that he was still in his hospital gown. And it wasn't doing him much covering while he was sitting up in a car. "Yeah. I guess that'd probably be a smart thing to do."

* * *

The next day quickly arrived and a morning sun had risen over Gravity Falls and the Mystery Shack. Obviously, the day was Summerween, but being early in the day, there wasn't much to celebrate just yet. The most that could be done was continue to stack up on decorations and candy for the evening festivities and trick-or-treating.

The Mystery Shack already had its decoration in place, however, and an abundance of candy had already been purchased for the night's event. They've done all they could already, and so the morning was just like any other morning.

Dipper sat in the chair in front of the TV, writing in his journal as a commercial played. Despite his plans to be wrapped up in the middle of an otherwise normal Summerween party, he contemplated different ideas of potential weirdness that could come up in the evening. The Summerween Trickster was a threat that they had no intention of ever having to deal with, but they still came into contact with it.

He hasn't looked into them as much as he should, but perhaps there were other Summerween legends that they could run the risk of facing. The vampire bat situation that they never solved before they ran into Pacifica at the diner was still at hand. Maybe there was some evil Summerween vampire that was controlling them and preparing to unleash them upon the town in the evening.

If that were the case, they do have plenty of garlic in the freezer that Soos keeps for his Texas Toast. It wouldn't be a bad thing to use.

Dipper cataloged these potential ideas and scenarios and how he'd plan on solving them should the night bring them to it. As he did so, he heard the thumping of Mabel running down the staircase.

"MY MABEL-SENSES ARE TINGLING!" Mabel exclaimed as she ran down the steps and over to the door. "And they're sensing…" She then proceeded to open the door, revealing an extraordinarily hairy mailman, who had his fist raised frozen in the air as if he was just about to knock on the door. "Harry! There's my favorite mailman! How're you doing on this fine Summerween? Are you dressing up? With all that hair of yours, I think you'd make a great werewolf! Don't you think?"

Not processing her stream of questions and statements, Harry simply continued to stare at her in wonder of her ability to beat him to the door  _yet again_ , just as he still had his fist raised. "How do you always do that?"

"I work in mysterious ways, Harry," Mabel told him. "But nevermind me- do you have anything for me?"

Harry lowered his eyebrows as he realized the contradictory nature of Mabel's statement. Nonetheless, he reached under his arm, where he was holding onto two boxes. He handed them over to her. "Here you go."

Mabel quickly accepted the packages in her hand and walked back inside. "Thanks, Harry!" she exclaimed before slamming the door right in his face. He stood there for a moment, not sure how to process things. Soon enough though, Mabel opened the door back up. "Oh, I almost forgot!" She proceeded to grab a bag of candy from inside, taking a few wrapped up pieces before walking up to Harry's mailbag and personally stuffing them inside. "Happy Summerween!"

She walked back into the Shack and slammed the door in his face again. Outside, Harry continued to stand in place, still unable to process what had happened yet again. However, Mabel had opened the door one last time with another handful of candy. She walked up to his bag and placed the pieces inside. "And some for the kids!"

She took a step back to walk back inside the Mystery Shack again but stopped herself. She turned back and stepped up to Harry's bag, placing her hand inside and picking red pieces out. She looked up awkwardly at Harry, who gave her a look of curiosity.

"Sorry, I just really like the red pieces."

After picking a few more red ones back out of his mailbag, she stepped away from him and shut the door in his face for the last time. Harry's eyebrows lowered exasperatedly as he sighed and turned around, beginning to walk away from the Shack.

Back inside, Mabel grabbed the two packages she had received and quickly ran over to the living room with them. She threw one of the packages right in Dipper's lap before throwing her body on the floor in front of him with her own package.

"Check it out, bro-bro!" she exclaimed, gesturing toward the package she threw to him.

Dipper put his journal to the side and picked up the package, examining it. "What's this?"

"Something special I ordered," she told him with an excited smirk. "Open it, open it, open it!"

"Alright, alright," Dipper said as he proceeded to pulled the tape off the package.

Once it was off, he opened the box and looked inside. He then raised an eyebrow as he found himself looking at a familiar tan coat. As lifted it up for closer examination, but found that underneath the coat was an also familiar red turtleneck sweater. Putting the two together, the idea clicked in Dipper's head.

"Great Uncle Ford's clothes?"

"Well…?" Mabel asked as if she was pleading for his thoughts.

"I don't get it," Dipper admitted as he continued to look back and forth between the clothes. "Are you doing his laundry or…?"

"No, you big ding-a-ling!" Mabel denied as she shoved him in the shoulder. "Those aren't his exact clothes. Those are fitted for you! It's your Summerween costume!"

"What? Really?" Dipper asked as he spread out the clothes in front of him. Looking at the tags, he realized she was correct. They  _were_ fitted for him.

"Yep! And check this out!" Mabel nodded as she tore into her own package. As soon as she opened her box, she pulled out a red fez, similar to the one that belonged to the Mr. Mystery outfit. She stood up and placed it on her head. "Hey there, Dipper! It's your Grunkle Stan!" she imitated in a rough voice reminiscent of Stan himself. "I'm back from the Arctic and...UGH!" she exclaimed as she suddenly slouched, placing a hand on her back as if she was suffering back pain. "My back! Oh no! I'm four years older! Ow…."

Dipper chuckled at her imitation of their great uncle. "No way. Stan and Ford outfits? How'd you get these mailed in such short time? We only just realized that today was Summerween yesterday."

"I borrowed Soos's credit card last night when I ordered them so I could get Day One delivery," Mabel explained.

"Borrowed?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I left him an IOU," Mabel told him.

"Oh sweet!" Soos's voice exclaimed from the kitchen. His head suddenly popped out and into view of the living room, where he cheerfully held out a pink sticky note in his hand that read the 'IOU' in blue marker. "Another IOU! Thanks, Mabel!"

"Anytime, Soos!" Mabel nodded with a salute before he returned to the kitchen.

"Why does that excite him?" Dipper asked, confused as to why Soos is joyful over receiving a sticky note.

"Because I use a different colored sticky note each time! Who isn't excited by colors? Oh wait..." she said before suddenly resuming her imitation of Stan, slouching over again and returning to her rough voice. "I am.  _Ohhhh..._ I'm grumpy and old and rainbows hurt my eyes."

Dipper chuckled once again at her imitation, genuinely finding it amusing how accurately she portrays people like Stan. "Wow. That's cool. So I'm Ford and you're Stan then."

"Yep," Mabel nodded. "It's the most obvious choice."

"Obvious?" Dipper asked, confused by what she was implying. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, with you and your smarty pants and Ford with his smarty  _hands_ …" she said as she wiggled her fingers in front his face. "...I felt you two parallel well as the nerds of us two pairs of Pines twins. Whereas Stan's more my kind of match. Outgoing, dangerous, and reckless!"

"Yeah. I guess that makes sense," Dipper agreed.

"Yup!" Mabel nodded. "And I've always seen you as the type to grow up to be someone just like Ford. Not just the nerdiness but the personality, the history, and the cold presence! Grunkle Ford is almost like an old man version of you! The parallels are almost scary!"

This statement made Dipper think a bit. The idea that Mabel thinks of him as the type to grow into some like his Great Uncle based on everything they had come to know about him based on his past with Stan, he couldn't possibly process the idea that he mirrored him. Especially when Mabel claims that she imagines him replicating his history.

"Well, I don't think of myself like that."

"What do you mean?" Mabel asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I mean I don't see myself growing into someone like Great Uncle Ford," Dipper told her. "If anything, the similarities end at the 'nerdiness' and above average intelligence."

"That's cool with me, bro," Mabel shrugged. "It'll still be adorable to see you walking around like  _wittle_ teenage Ford. And me as  _wittle_ teenage Stan, although more feminine and about 85% less angsty than the real teenage Stan was."

"Actually, Mabel. I don't think I want to anymore."

Mabel's eyes lit up at this statement, prompting her to face her brother with a look of confusion. "Wait, what?"

"You can dress up as Stan, but I think I'll keep away from dressing as Ford," he told her.

Mabel wasn't sure how to respond to this claim and ended up just chuckling awkwardly. "Uh...Dipper. The whole point of the costumes is to match. We're supposed to be Pines twins dressing as the  _original_  Pines twins."

"I know," Dipper nodded understandingly. "I'm just saying that I don't want to."

"Why not?" Mabel asked, starting to grow a little tense by Dipper's sudden mind change. "You were on board just a second ago."

"That was until I realized that the costume doesn't suit me like that," he reasoned.

"Um, yes, it does," she refuted. "It's your size. I made sure of it. And you haven't even tried it on yet!"

"That's not what I meant."

"Are you seriously leaving me hanging on my costume idea just because you don't 'see yourself' growing up to be like Grunkle Ford?" Mabel asked, now getting completely irritated by Dipper's reasoning. "That's like if you didn't want to be Chewbacca because you don't 'see yourself' growing up to be a furry, growling wookiee!

"Chewbacca is fictional, Mabel," Dipper said, narrowing his eyes at this comparison.

"They're both costumes, Dipper! You're not  _actually_  becoming Ford the same way you didn't  _actually_  become Chewbacca!" Mabel argued. "It's just dressing up for fun and for one night! That's it! Why do you always have to make things so  _damn_ complicated?"

Dipper's eyes bulged in shock at Mabel's language. Despite them both being teens now and their vocabulary evolving, she still wasn't one to use such words like 'damn' too often. Seeing her use it in an angry tone caught him off guard, and reminded him that she was truly upset.

He saw her eyes mist slightly, but she quickly rubbed them dry with her sleeve, preventing herself from getting more emotional than she knew she should be, which was something she had learned to do more as she matured. She then grabbed the rest of her Stan costume in the box. "Fine. If you care that much about a costume representing who you are, then I'll just dress up for Summerween on my own. I'm sorry for assuming that we were past this kind of thing already."

With her costume, she promptly left the living room and went back upstairs, leaving Dipper on his own. As she left, Dipper slumped back in his seat and sighed, unsure whether he should feel guilty or not. On one hand, he was defending a legitimate feeling of his, but perhaps it was the wrong thing to be feeling about the situation.

Soon, he heard Mabel slam the door shut back upstairs. Melody appeared to have heard it too, as she suddenly poked her head from the gift shop doorway. Her eyes landed upon Dipper in the chair, who hadn't appeared to have noticed her.

"Dipper?"

Dipper looked up at the sound of his name and saw Melody right across from him. "Oh. Hey, Melody."

"What's going on?" she asked, walking over beside his chair, leaning her side against the wall behind him. "It sounded like you and Mabel were having an argument or something."

Dipper sighed. "Nothing. It's just...Mabel wants us to dress up as our great uncles for Summerween tonight. They're twins, of course, so she thinks since we're twins, it'd be fun to mimic them."

"Aww, that's a cute idea!" Melody said with a smile, charmed by the idea.

"I don't want to do it though," he added.

"Oh…" Melody said awkwardly at this addition. "Well, why?"

Dipper gave a sigh as he prepared to go on a ramble. "You see- she wants me to dress as my Great Uncle Ford, but I feel like that sort of draws some sort of parallel between us. For as much as I look up to him and have a lot of things in common as him, I don't see myself becoming like him. Mabel thinks I'll grow up similarly to him though. The same cold presence, she says. I mean, I'm not cold! I'm a target for spitballs in high school. Most girls think I'm weak. My best friend does most of my defending for me. I don't know what I see myself becoming in the future, but it's not Great Uncle Ford." He sighed again, realizing how jumbled his ramble may sound to her, considering he didn't know her too well. "I don't know. It's all kind of complicated."

"Oh, Dipper," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder comfortingly with an apparent look of understanding. "That's not kind of complicated. That's very complicated."

"Well then…" Dipper said, expecting a completely different response based on her gesture.

"Look, based on the little bit I heard from Mabel before I walked in here, it just sounds like she just wants you to put on a costume and have fun with it for one night," she explained to him. "This whole perspective-thing you got going on just makes things seem complicated for the sake of being complicated."

"Seems like 'complicated' is the word of the day," Dipper claimed as he slumped forward in his seat.

"Is it?" she asked in slight shock. "Soos and I haven't watched today's episode of Sesame Sheep. I made a bet with him that the word of the day is going to be 'possession'. Is the word really 'complicated'?"

"Uh...I couldn't say," Dipper answered, not at all sure how to respond to that.

"Darn," she replied somewhat dejectedly.

"Anyways, I guess I get what you're saying, but it all kinda goes back to this one time where I was with my Great Uncle Ford on an adventure and he had told me that he sees a lot of himself in me and offered me an apprenticeship, which meant staying here in Gravity Falls with him and leaving Mabel alone back in California. I was going to accept, but then I decided that spending high school with Mabel was more important. And that hasn't changed," Dipper explained to her as he looked up at the ceiling. "But there have been times when I still think about that offer and how different things could've been had I taken it. But every time I do, I feel bad because I know that's not the decision I made and I shouldn't be thinking about it. So when I see myself getting compared to Ford, I just feel like I'm just supposed to...refuse. Just like the apprenticeship. Just that...mental association, I guess."

"I think I understand where you're coming from," Melody nodded. "I still remember this one Halloween when I was a kid. My sister and I had finished trick-or-treating. Then she thought it'd be a smart idea to eat half the candy in one night, which led to her throwing up a rainbow of colorful assorted candy on me. I was mortified. I refused to step out of my room for several Halloweens, as I always associated that one time with every Halloween after. But eventually, I realized that that was just one time and that despite how terrified I was of getting rainbow puked on again, it probably wasn't going to happen. And so when I decided to go trick-or-treating again, it didn't happen! My sister and I were cool again," Melody said positively until her facial expression suddenly changed as she recalled further events. "That was until college rolled around and she became a sorority girl, stopped caring about education and her own well being, and focused on partying and st...I mean...other things. But mom and dad are supportive of her though, so why stop? She's enjoying life. She's paying the bills. I still love her to death, but, uh, we haven't spoken in some time…"

"Um...okay..." was all Dipper could say after Melody basically poured out a bunch of her own family issues unexpectedly and in a very blunt manner. He just looked on at her in concern as she just stared up at the ceiling as if she was facing flashbacks of her described past.

Melody's eyes then looked back down at Dipper, and she came back down to Earth, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly as she realized what she had done. "Sorry. I can see how I got  _way_ off track there," she said with an awkward chuckle. "Look, Dipper. My point is you'll only continue to associate that moment with your great uncle with small things like dressing up like him for Summerween if you don't just face those small things. It's like conquering a fear. Sometimes you just gotta face it head on in order to, ya know, move on. Your sister's just asking you to put on a matching costume with her for a party. Don't miss out on something fun because of something so needlessly complex that it's messing you up in the head, okay?"

Dipper thought for a moment, eventually smiling once he realized what Melody was getting at. "You're right. I really am being ridiculous, aren't I? Man, I don't know why I do this. To myself  _and_  to Mabel…"

"You just miss your great-uncles," she justified for him, rubbing his shoulder comfortingly. "I've gone through similar deals with Soos. Except he's a bit more... _stubborn_  about it…"

* * *

"Alright, Mr. Pines. I need your opinion again," Soos said to a framed picture of Stan on the wall as he held a bowtie in each hand. "For tonight's Summerween party- black bowtie or orange bowtie? I've been feeling the black one, but I think the orange one is pretty dope too. I don't know. What do you thin-"

He stopped himself as he stared on at the picture as if he was receiving a response. His eyes suddenly lit up at something he thought he was hearing.

"R-really?" he asked the picture, his eyes sparkling happily. "You're...you're being honest?" He waited a bit more for another response before suddenly dropping the two bowties out of pure shock and happiness. He then grabbed the picture frame from the wall and held it out in front of him. "Yes! Yes, Mr. Pines! I will be your son!" He then wrapped his arms around the picture frame, hugging it tightly out of pure joy. He began tearing up through his tightly shut eyes, but he suddenly opened them as he considered something. "Melody?" his voice called out. "Am I doing it again?"

In the same room right behind him were Melody and Dipper, who had simply turned their heads to watch Soos and his delusions ensue in the corner of the living room. As Soos stared on at Melody for confirmation on his question, she gave him a mellow nod, confirming he was just seeing things again.

"Of course," Soos sorrowly replied to her nod as he placed the picture of Stan back on the wall. "Maybe another day then."

Dejectedly, Soos walked out of the living room and went upstairs. Dipper and Melody simply watched him shamefully walk away, both feeling bad for his missing of Stan.

"For reference, I've been dealing with that since I moved in with him four years ago," Melody told Dipper.

"Wow. Poor Soos," Dipper said, shaking his head slightly in sympathy. "Well, anyways. Thanks, Melody. You've really helped open my eyes a bit and I appreciate it."

"No problem, dude," Melody nodded with a smile. "I like being all morally reasonable and stuff, if that's even what it's called. If you or Mabel ever need anything, don't be afraid to ask."

"Of course," Dipper nodded back. "And uh, just to be sure, you're okay, right? With your sister and all?"

"Oh, of course!" Melody blew off with a smile. "I've been long used to how crazy my family is. I mean, my dad was a circus clown and my mom played fiddle in an old Irish band. They met in an Australian hospital after both getting bitten by brown snakes touring the same town. My dad fell for my mom's black-skinned ankle, and she for his coagulated arm. Their wedding was an Irish Circus event and within the next ten years, they decided to have me, my two sisters, and my six other brothers. Crazy stuff, huh?"

Dipper stared at her with mixed thoughts on how to feel about everything she had just said. "Yep...pretty crazy stuff indeed…"

"Well, glad we could have this talk," Melody said as she readied herself to leave the room. "I better go tend to Soos before he suffers another emotional breakdown. I'll catch you later, dude."

She proceeded to casually leave the living room and walk upstairs, leaving Dipper alone once again. He looked down at the package with the Ford costume and held up the tan coat right in front of him. He stared at it for a good second before beginning to feel guilty for denying Mabel. He really was making things needlessly complicated.

Now, he knew he needed to make things up to her.

* * *

Later that day, Stan and Ford found themselves driving through a highway somewhere near the border of Idaho. At that point in the afternoon, they were approximately six more hours before reaching Gravity Falls if driving was consistent. The drive from Cheyenne to their current location in Idaho had been fairly normal and without any unusual gestures from Stan. The rest of the drive home was looking to be mostly free of any major situations.

However, Ford had decided to pull up into a nearby rest area for something he had been meaning to do since leaving Cheyenne. He drove into an empty parking space and promptly parked the car. He sighed, leaning his head back in his seat exhaustedly. Stan looked out the window, noticing they were stopped and then looked back over at him.

"Why're we stopping?" he asked. "We already took a bathroom break half an hour ago."

"This isn't a bathroom break. This rest area has a shop," Ford told him. "I'm gonna go inside and finally grab some temporary batteries for Meridian. Seeing as though we're only about six more hours from Gravity Falls, I wanna call Dipper and Mabel and let them know that we're to be expected later tonight."

Ford then proceeded to let out a large yawn as he leaned forward in his seat. He hasn't gotten a proper amount of sleep for over a day at that point, and the very few hours he did get back at the motel had done nothing for him. He was basically ready to just fall asleep right on the wheel.

Stan noticed this, however, and gave him a concerned look. "Yeesh, Sixer. You really need to give the driving a break and get some rest. The bags under your eyes are starting to make your face wrinkles actually look healthy."

"I'm fine," Ford assured him, leaning away from the wheel.

"Come on, Ford. I know after the sleepwalking thing in Cheyenne that you're worried about me going crazy in the middle of the road, but honestly, I think we're risking more by having your twenty-four-hours-without-sleep ass driving us for another six hours," Stan told him. "You gotta get some sleep, bro. And trust me, I feel as well-rested and healthy as a man can dream. I can easily complete this drive for us."

Ford proceeded to yawn again before looking over at Stan. "It's too risky, Stan. Don't worry about me. I've spent far more days without sleep during my trips through the multiverse. This is nothing in comparison."

"Sure thing, Mr. Multiverse. But if I may remind you, you're in the real world now. Not another dimension," Stan pointed out. "You wanna stop needlessly challenging yourself to do stuff you don't have to do?"

"As long as I'm keeping my family safe, I'll challenge myself as much as I like," Ford told him as he opened the car door and stepped outside. "I'll be right back."

Ford closed the car door and walked away, heading toward the rest stop's shop. As he did so, Stan poked his head out the lowered window and called after him. "Just to clarify- by doing this drive, you're not really keeping  _anyone_ safe!"

Ford paid him no response and simply continued on his way to the shop. Stan sighed somewhat irritatedly and brought his head back in the car, bringing the window back up.

"Ford's worrying too much," Stan said aloud to himself as he crossed his arms. "Sure, maybe I nearly killed myself by sleepwalking, even though I have no memory of it. And sure, maybe I randomly collapsed and had to go to the hospital, which is another thing I have no memory of…" His facial expression appeared to grow less stubborn as he continued to think about what had been wrong with him. "And maybe I did throw Thistle Downe through a window. And according to Ford, I constantly forget the last thing I had apparently said. And my eyes have gone bloodshot for no reason..."

He then looked at himself in the rearview mirror, looking right into his eyes. They were perfectly white and appeared normal and he felt no oddly painful sensation in them. He looked away from the rearview mirror and simply stared forward, thinking about himself. All this time he had truly led himself into believing that it was just a simple case of dehydration, but it was starting to become clear to him now that it could be something more.

"Is there really something wrong with me?" he said as he looked down at his hands. However, he clenched them tightly and confidently. "There can't be! I feel fine! I look fine. Everything feels and looks normal. Stan Pines feels normal." He looked back at himself in the rearview mirror and narrowed his eyes at himself confidently.

"I  _am_ normal."

He then smiled at the mirror after successfully reassuring himself. However, he frowned upon another realization.

"Now that I think about it, is talking to myself while I'm alone in my brother's car normal?" Stan asked his reflection. In the mirror, his eyes glanced behind his reflection and at the Snacken in the backseat, which was staring right up at him in the mirror as well. He frowned at it. "Oh, please. You don't count."

He then stopped looking up at the mirror and mentally realized he should stop talking directly to himself. He then started to glance around at the unopened compartments at the front of the car.

"Maybe dad left behind some money in his car," he said as he opened one of the compartments, digging his hand into it. "Or some sorta old 60's or 70's thing that's worth a lot now."

* * *

Not too long later, Ford emerged from the rest area's shop with a pack of lithium cell batteries in hand. Not wanting to waste time, he promptly ripped open the pack and took four batteries out from the pack of six. He pressed a button on the side of Meridian which triggered it to flip open from the top, revealing its open battery compartment. In the center of the watch was a single, large, gold-colored cell battery. He carefully took the piece out from the watch and stuffed it into his coat. He then placed the four lithium batteries in place of where the single large battery used to be.

Part of his prototype design for Meridian was having versatile functions and features, including using normal batteries as a backup in case his specifically designed battery for the watch stopped working. One of his plans for the finished version of the watch, however, was making a single unlimited usage battery using materials he had kept in his lab from the portal. The temporary battery was built only to test out any potential errors in the watch, and therefore, he didn't want to waste advanced resources on something that might not even work properly.

After inserting the lithium batteries into the watch, he pressed the same button he had pressed to open it to close it back again. With all the advanced technology featured on the watch, he knew that the few cheap lithium batteries would be quickly drained. But he also knew it would provide just enough power to the watch long enough for him to call Dipper and Mabel, which was the only reason he bought the batteries in the first place.

After a brief moment, Meridian's interface lit up, prompting Ford to crack a smile in his success. However, his smile quickly faded when he saw a prompt come up.

_Recalibrating design. This may take awhile…_

With the watch having been powered off and stuck in offline mode for several days, it was now entering recalibration, where it would try to correlate itself with its previous state before its battery drained. And since it had been several days, the process was bound to take even longer to catch up.

"Damn," Ford said to himself, facepalming at the fact that he had forgotten his own design. "How can I forget about the recalibration process?"

_HONK! HONK!_

Ford was startled by the sudden honks of a car, to which he quickly realized was his own as he looked ahead of him. Stan had taken over the wheel and pulled up to the curb of the rest area, glancing over at him through the open window.

"Hey, that seemed to have woken you up a bit!" Stan remarked, having noticed Ford's jump.

"Stanley? What are you doing?" Ford asked his brother as he walked over to the vehicle. "I told you that  _I'm_  driving us home."

"Oh please, Sixer," Stan said, rolling his eyes. "Look at how drained you are. There ain't no way you're gonna get us to Gravity Falls without unnoticeably driving us off a cliff."

"I told you that I'm…" Ford said, before interrupting himself with a sudden need to yawn. Realizing how bad that makes his attempted statement look now, he tried to call himself out on it before Stan could. "Alright, that looked bad. But-"

"No buts," Stan cut off. "You need rest. Me? I'm tired of it. My eyes are fine, my attitude couldn't be better, and I feel as healthy as can be. I'm good enough to finish this for us, Ford."

"Stanley, I really don't…"

" _Trust me_ , Stanford," Stan pleaded.

Ford stared into Stan's eyes, seeing that he was very insistent about driving them home. Stan was right about his earlier assumption of him being afraid of him driving because of what had happened the previous night. And his fear hasn't lessened very much with his pleads.

However, as much as he hated to admit it, he really did need rest. And truthfully, Stan has been acting the most like himself since they came from Cheyenne. While having him take the wheel could still be risky, being drowsy on the road could lead to just as much disaster and perhaps even worse.

"Alright, fine. You can take the wheel," Ford said as he proceeded to enter the passenger seat right beside Stan. "I don't feel comfortable making this decision, but I'm willing to trust your word here this one time."

"Don't worry, Poindexter," Stan said as he patted Ford on the back. "I promise you that when you wake up, the first sight you'll see is the Mystery Shack herself."

"One can only hope," Ford said skeptically as he rested his head back against his headrest. "But in case you do start to face issues again, I encourage you to wake me anyways."

"Nothing's gonna happen," Stan continued to assure him. "Just go to sleep already. I ain't gonna let anything bad happen to ya..."

Ford had already begun to quickly doze off at the moment and almost instantly fell into deep sleep, which went to show just how much rest he had been lacking previously. As soon as he began to snore, Stan took the car out of parking and began carefully driving out of the rest stop, making his way back to the highway.

"...not again," Stan continued as he focused on the road ahead of him, assuring his brother and himself that he wouldn't put his family in danger again.

He pulled right into the highway and picked up his speed to match the other fast moving cars through the lanes. Now only six hours away, their final drive to Gravity Falls had begun.

 


	26. Stan-doff: Part 3

"Ford…"

_Zzzzzz…_

" _Forrrrrd…?_ "

_Zzzzzz…_

"FORD!"

"Wha-?!" Ford asked as he finally jolted awake, frantically looking around in fear. "What's happening?!"

"Easy, bro," Stan's voice told him calmly. "Nothing's happening."

"God, Stanley, then why'd you wake me like that?" Ford asked annoyedly as he took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes tiredly.

"Would ya just chill out for a sec?" Stan's voice told him. "Just look forward and tell me what you see."

Ford sighed exasperatedly as he placed his glasses back on his face. "I tell you, Stan. Sometimes you can be so utterly ridicu-"

He cut himself off once he got a good look at what was ahead. In front of them was a set of railings, signifying they were on a cliff of some sort. But right through the windshield and behind the railings, he found himself staring at the once familiar sight of a pair of hanging cliffs. As his vision continued to adjust, the cliffs became an apparent sight of what hangs right over Gravity Falls itself. The valley the town resides within laid right underneath the cliffs; the town itself illuminating slightly in the dark and starry night with the moon covered by a bunch of thick clouds that floated across the evening sky.

Gravity Falls, Oregon.

This was no dream. They had finally made it.

"We're...home..." Ford said as he marveled at the sight. "After all these years. After all these delays. All the sidetracking. All the adventures. After four long years, we're finally back in Gravity Falls."

"We are," Stan agreed.

"Wow…" Ford said as he continued to stare on in disbelief. He then chuckled as he recalled an earlier statement. "Ya know, Stanley, waking up to the hanging cliffs isn't the same as waking up to the Shack as you promised earlier. But still, after all this time, it's a sight just as marvelous."

"I agree," Stan agreed again, Ford not even making eye contact with him. "You're lucky to have a brother like me who cares about making your last sight memorable."

Ford chuckled at this statement. "Well, Stanley, I sure am lucky to have-" he stopped himself as he repeated Stanley's statement in his head. "Wait, what do you mean my last si-"

_SCREEEEEEEECH!_

The wheels of the tires suddenly started rolling fast as Stan suddenly stomped on the gas without warning. Ford's body flew forward against the dashboard, realizing that for some reason, he wasn't even buckled into his seatbelt.

"WOAH! STANLEY?! WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU-?!"

At that moment, Stan had let go of the brakes and the car was sent speeding forward. Ford flew back into his seat, still not buckled in. He opened his eyes and tried to glance over at Stan. However, before he could react at all, the car burst straight through the railing and began its descent down the cliff. Ford began screaming as his body began flying throughout the car as it flipped forward, while Stan sat held in place with his seatbelt strapped in.

In the backseat, the Snacken tried to use its tentacles to hold on to the seat as tight as it could. On the way down, however, it lost its grip and got sent flying directly under the front car seat. There, it stuck itself in the tight space so it wouldn't keep flying around.

Soon enough, the car collided violently with the ground on its right side before bouncing and flipping around several more times through the forest it had proceeded to enter below. Each flip and each bounce damaged the car immensely, adding several large dents, scratches, and cracks on the metallic surface of the car. Each window shattered as they made contact with the ground. Being an older car as well, the roof even began to tear.

The car then flipped itself straight into a large tree, which provided a violent stop to the flipping as it laid at an angle against the tree. At that point, the car was basically decimated. Having just dropped from the height it did, there was little to salvage from its crash. Just about everything was smashed in and broken.

After a brief moment of stillness, the passenger door was kicked off its hinge. Ford slowly emerged from it, crawling on his hands and knees to pull himself out of the car. He was badly bruised and bloodied in just about every area of his body. Crawling alone pained him in just about every muscle of his, but he was persistent. He threw himself out of the car onto the grass of the forest, laying on his back as he took several deep breaths, trying to recover himself before even beginning to process the event that had just transpired.

After laying for a brief second, he turned around and put himself back on his hands and knees. He coughed up some blood on the ground, holding onto his chest in pain.

" **HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!** "

Ford's head turned upon hearing the sudden voice. And a familiar one at that. He saw his brother walking toward him, his clothes torn and his body just as bruised and bloodied. He seemed to have no issue walking, however, as he approached him. However, the voice and the glowing yellow eyes in the night darkness of the forest paired, Ford's heart dropped hard as he realized exactly what was happening.

" **OH, THAT LOOKS BAD, 'BRO!'** " said the sinister voice of Bill Cipher from the mouth of Stan Pines. " **WE SHOULD PROBABLY GET THAT CHECKED OUT, DONTCHA THINK?** "

Ford didn't speak a word. He stared on at his greatest enemy taking control of his sibling in absolute disbelief and trembling fear. While his body was still processing the crash, his mind seemed to have almost completely forgotten it and substituted that mental room with the sight he saw before him.

" **YOU ALRIGHT, SIXER**?" Bill taunted, putting on a sinister smile with Stan's mouth. " **DON'T WORRY! I WAS SEARCHING THROUGH THE POP'S OLD CAR EARLIER AND I FOUND** _ **THIS**_   **IN HIS GLOVEBOX!** " Bill said as he suddenly took out a gun from the inside of Stan's jacket, pointing it straight at him. " **MAYBE WE CAN USE IT TO MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!** "

* * *

At the Mystery Shack, the Summerween party had long since begun. Orange, purple, and green strobe lighting flashed around, while the smoke machine produced enough smoke to mimic a dark street alley. The effects combined to fit the Summerween mood as bass boosted music blasted through the stereo.

The party had a good amount of townsfolk around, although it didn't quite compare to the usual parties around the Shack. Still, those who showed were dancing and having a good time. Everything seemed to be going to plan.

Soos stood at a DJ booth he kept stood in the back of the museum. He dressed as his favorite video game character, Lario, donning an orange plumber costume with black overalls. He also wore an obnoxiously large, fake handlebar mustache. He bobbed his head to the best of the music as he DJ'd, occasionally looking up to see all the dancing folks with their many costumes.

"Hope all you dudes are having a good time!" Soos spoke into the microphone. "DJ Lario's gotta step aside from the booth for a sec! But not to worry. The rad Muwigi is here to take over in the meantime!" he said as he gestured to his right, where Abuelita sat in a recliner dressed in a blue plumber costume reminiscent of Soos's. However, she simply sat asleep in her seat, not even paying any mind to the loud, bass-heavy music and partying going on.

At the front of the gift shop entrance, Wendy sat out at a table collecting the entry fees from those who came in. Her costume was reminiscent of her old apocalypse outfit during Weirdmageddon, except a bit more stylized as a costume rather than a last-minute survivor outfit. She sat at the stand appearing bored and somewhat sorrowful but did her job of taking the entry fees and placing them into a designated box.

Soos stood out right beside her. "How're things going over here, Wendy?"

"Oh, hey, Soos," Wendy said, working up a smile for him, but her eyes still showed slight dismay. "Great, I guess. Seems to be making more than the average day of tours."

"That's awesome!" Soos said excitedly.

"Yep, people are coming in fast, but I'm handling it," Wendy nodded.

"Sure looks like it," Soos said with a nod. "Ya know, I'm surprised, Wendy. Having worked with you for all these years, I've usually come to expect laziness and lack of worth ethic from you. Slacking off and leaving work to do others things."

"Who me?" Wendy asked awkwardly as if she didn't know what he was talking about. " _Nahhhh_."

"It's true!" Soos reinforced. "But recently, you've been doing a pretty great job around here. Just something I've noticed. I'm impressed. I mean, I'm a Soos, so that's pretty easy to do. But seriously, dude, I'm impressed!"

"Thanks...I guess…" Wendy accepted, though not so willingly.

"Yup! Keep up the good work, dawg," Soos said as he proceeded to walk back inside, not quite clueing in on Wendy's expressions.

As he walked back into the Shack, he walked through crowds of people, examining the various costumes of the guests. He appreciated the amount of diversity he saw and how many characters he had recognized. He even found himself somewhat surprised by how few other Larios he had seen.

However, what caught his eye was the sparkling purple Princess Plum dress worn by none other than Melody herself. He knew she was dressing up as her, but it was the first time he had seen her that night and was immediately awestruck by her appearance. They walked up to one another, smiles across their faces as they looked on at their couple's costumes.

"Wow, you look stunning, my princess," Soos said as he took her hand in his and held it in front of him.

Melody then giggled at this, placing her other hand over her mouth. "Look, Soos, you're an adorable Lario, but that's like the cheesiest thing you could've said to me," she said as she gave another giggle of admiration.

"Sorry dude, I couldn't help it," Soos shrugged. "With this hat on my head, my inner Lario has awoken. I must embrace the cheesiness."

"Maybe you're right. I was considering being just as cheesy but didn't want to play into the whole damsel in distress sorta deal that Princess Plum is known for in the Lario franchise," Melody said with a smile.

"Dude, we could totally be cheesy together. Like cheese buddies!" Soos suggested. "Not cheese bros, cause those two over there are are already got the costume down," he told her as he pointed out a pair of boys walking by that we're actually dressed as pieces of string cheese, oddly enough.

Elsewhere in the party, Mabel emerged from a crowd of people dancing. As planned, she had dressed up in the old Mr. Mystery costume with the intentions of appearing as her Grunkle Stan, despite the character not exactly being his anymore. Still, the suit fit perfectly for her and she wore the fez that went with the character, of course. However, she had quickly realized that the suit wasn't really made for dancing and she found a hard time enjoying herself at the party.

She felt odd being by herself during a big party. Normally she'd take such an event to go around meeting people and make friends. It's how she had met Candy and Grenda after all. However, she just wasn't in the mingling mood at that moment, and simply kept to the sidelines. Between the situation with Dipper earlier and missing Grunkle Stan even more each time she looked at herself in the mirror, she was lost in a mix of different sorrows. She was beginning to blame herself for everything, as the costume idea was quickly starting to become one of her biggest regrets.

"Dressing up as Grunkle Stan…" she had told herself a bit earlier when she looked at herself. "What was I thinking?"

But she committed to it, hoping her mixed feelings would blow over once she got lost in the fun of the night. However, it had become clear that she wasn't getting lost in much fun at all.

"Wow, you look down."

She had turned around to see the purple glow of a glow-in-the-dark skeleton hoodie, which had also concealed the wearer's face. However, the voice, appearance, and general mannerisms made it quite clear to her who it was.

"Wow, you look original," Mabel said with an eye roll. "A skeleton hoodie, Derrick? Your taste is along the same lines as Robbie."

"Okay, first off- I have no idea who that is," Derrick said as he pulled his zipper down from his head to reveal his annoyed face. "Second- this holiday didn't even exist to me until Dipper told me last night. This was the best I could do."

"Again, real original," Mabel told him.

"And what are you?" Derrick said, scanning her costume. "Isn't that the fat one's clothes?"

"That's not who I'm trying to…" Mabel tried to come back before realizing it was pointless. "Forget it. There's no point in explaining anything to  _you_."

"Yeesh," Derrick replied. "You know, I remember how much of a fanatic about Halloween you used to be back in Piedmont. Throwing those big parties and such. Hell, it was always the one time of the year you'd actually be nice to me."

"Okay, for the record, I was never 'being nice to you.' I just tolerated you more," she corrected before her eyes bulged at a realization. "Oh God, I sound like Pacifica," she whispered to herself.

"Well, for such a similar holiday, you're being way more uptight," he stated. "I mean,  _I'm_  used to it. Some others probably aren't though."

"So what're you trying to do? Help me?" Mabel asked, not seeing his point in telling her this.

"Nah, I'm just saying you're being an asshole. There's still money on the table here. Don't you forget," Derrick said with a smirk as he proceeded to walk away. "I'm gonna get a drink. Later, Sparkles."

Mabel watched him walk away, eyes narrowing at him as he drifted into the crowd of people.

"Asshole," she said with an eye roll as she tuned his words out of her head.

"Woah there. I don't recall doing anything," another voice suddenly entered.

Mabel's head turned as she suddenly spotted Ryland and his younger brother Evan right behind her.

"W-what? No, no, no! Not you!  _Absolutely_  not you!" Mabel clarified frantically as her face reddened slightly.

"Chill. I'm just messing," Ryland said with a light chuckle.

Mabel smiled slightly for a second too, but then she processed the fact that she had also said such a word in front of a twelve-year-old too. "And Evan...I'm so sorry! I normally don't say stuff like that, but…"

"It's fine," Evan quickly dismissed as he turned over to Ryland. "Living with this guy, there's really nothing I haven't already heard."

"Haha. This kid, am I right?" Ryland laughed off, rubbing the top of Evan's head playfully, although seemingly with a bit of roughness too as Evan's expression showed slight irritation as one of his eyes twitched.

Mabel finally took a moment to process the fact that Ryland and Evan were actually dressed up in costumes too. Ryland wore a familiar dark blue constable outfit with a matching hat, while Evan dressed up in completely white clothing, while also wearing a green detective hat on his head.

At that moment, it had made sense to her.

"Ohhh...Duck-tective and the Constable!" she realized after a good moment of scanning their costumes, putting on a wide grin.

"Yep!" Ryland nodded excitedly upon her realization. "I've actually managed to get Evan into Duck-tective recently, and we sorta figured doing this sorta matching costume thing for Summerween would've been kinda cool. I think it turned out pretty good, despite the fact he didn't put on the full Duck-tective costume we had initially planned."

"I'm not gonna glue feathers to my skin and tape a duckbill to my mouth when all you have to do is put on a pair of clothes," Evan groaned as he was reminded of an argument prior to the party.

"You're Duck-tective! The star! You should be embracing the idea of wearing the entire costume!" Ryland told him.

"Then why couldn't you have been Duck-tective and do the full embracing and let me be the Constable?" Evan asked.

"Pfft...are you implying the Constable is shorter than the Duck himself? God, you amateur. Can't even get basic facts of the show right," Ryland said, crossing his arms at Evan.

Evan turned to Mabel and pointed his thumb over at Ryland as if he wasn't standing right beside him. "I don't get him."

"If you don't get  _him_ , then I would stay away from looking up what the fandom has done online," Mabel told him with a smirk as she looked over at Ryland. "Even though your computer screen is probably great for viewing fanart."

"Yeah, some fans can get...pretty crazy…" Ryland nodded in agreement as he stared forward thinking about it. However, he quickly snapped himself out of it and looked back at Mabel and her costume. "Anyways, Mabel. That's a pretty cool costume you got going there. You don't look half-bad as Soos."

Mabel wanted to smile at his initial compliment, but his last statement only left her frowning. She sighed as she facepalmed. "I'm not Soos. I'm supposed to be my Grunkle Stan."

"Really? But, the costume…"

"Grunkle Stan gave the title of Mr. Mystery to Soos when he took over the Mystery Shack," Mabel clarified for him.

"Oh…" Ryland said guiltily. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"It's fine," Mabel said with a sorrow sigh. "The idea was that Dipper was supposed to dress up as our Grunkle Ford, Stan's twin brother. We'd be twins dressing up as twins, but he didn't want to do it. I thought it'd be cute, but even I'm starting to have second thoughts."

The three heads then turned to see Waddles on the ground, biting off what appeared to be a Ford costume made for him. He tore off the coat with his mouth before moving onto the gray wig on his head, shaking it around violently in aggravation.

"Even Waddles isn't a fan," Mabel pointed out. She sighed again, staring down at the ground as she leaned herself against the wall. "I wanted to pay some sort of family homage to them since they weren't here. But it was probably a bad idea to think up the costume the night before Summerween."

Ryland looked on at her sympathetically, while Evan stood there displaying a slightly less amount of sympathy, simply due to this only being their second meeting. Yet he still felt a certain level of sympathy for her. Ryland then walked over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey, don't be hard on yourself like that," Ryland told her with a comforting smile. "Sure, maybe it was planned a bit last minute. But that doesn't mean it was necessarily a bad idea. I mean, as you can see..." he said, gesturing toward himself and Evan. "...I think the idea of matching costumes with a sibling is pretty cool."

"Yeah," Mabel shrugged as she thought about it. "But at least  _your_ sibling actually matched with you."

" _Ehem!_ "

The three looked to the side and noticed someone walking down the staircase toward them. The person wore a red turtleneck sweater with a tan coat on top. Over his torso, he wore a black belt across his chest. Combined with black pants, brown boots, and a pair of glasses without any actual lenses on them. The outfit was Ford's, but the face was Dipper's, who stood up straight with his chest out as he reached the bottom step, posing heroically as he reached the bottom.

Mabel and Ryland stared at him in surprise while Evan just looked on at him normally. Dipper stood staring at the them in his pose for a second, his face straight. However, his eyes suddenly narrowed as he began to give them a distressed look.

" _This turtleneck is constricting my airflow..._ " he wheezed, his mannerisms signaling for help as his heroic pose disappeared.

Mabel and Ryland realized his struggle to breathe and quickly ran over to assist. Mabel grabbed ahold of the neck of the sweater and tugged on it. Ryland quickly handed her a pair of scissors that were lying to the side, which she accepted. Without hesitation, she cut straight through the middle of the front of the neck. As she did this, Dipper promptly took in a big gasp of air as if his neck had been previously belted up.

"Thanks…" he said as he panted, taking in as much air as he could. He then stood up and looked down at the cut she had made. "That pretty much ruins the sweater, but, thanks."

"Well, that sweater was about to ruin your life," Mabel justified as she patted around the front of his torso. "Why does it fit you so small? It's a turtleneck, not a superhero costume. I thought I got the correct size. You're medium, right?"

"Medium adult," Dipper clarified with a somewhat annoyed look on his face. "Not children's medium. You must've accidentally picked the wrong type of sweater and didn't notice."

"Huh...I was wondering why the turtleneck was so much cheaper than the rest of the outfit," Mabel realized. She then glanced down at the rest of Dipper's costume before looking back up at him. "But wait, I thought you didn't want to dress up as Ford because you were too busy caring about your morals?"

"Look, Mabel…" Dipper began as he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "I was being kind of stupid before. I don't know where I got all that nonsense about not thinking of myself as Ford when all you wanted me to do was dress up in a costume for fun for one night. Whatever 'morals' I had come up with, I don't care about anymore. My one moral now is making sure your Summerween doesn't get ruined because of me."

"Aw, Dipper," Mabel said as she gave him a sisterly nudge in the arm. "This is  _our_ Summerween, not just mine. And I admit...maybe I overreacted earlier when you said you wouldn't do the costume. Honestly, now that I've thought it through, I probably planned this all way too last minute for it to be effective at all."

"Well, to be fair, we did just find out that today was Summerween last night," Dipper pointed out.

"Exactly," Mabel nodded. "Still, I shouldn't have been so pushy about it. You had as much right to not wanna wear the costume as I had to want to wear it. I'm sorry."

"Aw, let's not go back and forth with apologies now," Dipper blew off with a smile. "I'm already in the damn thing. While the night is still young, let's just have a good time. It's our second Summerween. Let's make the most out of it."

"Agreed," Mabel nodded as she grinned. She narrowed her eyes confidently as she looked over across the room where Soos was back working at the DJ Booth. "SOOS! CRANK UP THE MUSIC! LET'S GET SOME RAISE ON THIS ROOF!"

Soos gave her a nod and a thumbs up as he placed his hand on the volume slider, promptly cranking up the music's volume and the bass at the same time. He raised it just as the beat dropped to the ongoing song, and everyone started cheering and dancing along.

Despite the struggle to dance in her costume, Mabel pushed herself to dance along as hard she could. Dipper wasn't much of a dancer as she was and simply did an odd swaying-bobbing dance in his place. Ryland danced just as casually as most of the other party attendees but had his eyes fixating on how crazy Mabel was going. Evan simply stood back and watched, while lightly bobbing his head to the music. Big parties and loud music were never his thing but he was willing to kick back a bit for the fun of the evening.

Generally, everyone at the party seemed to be having a good time. Between those who were dancing and those who were just hanging out to the side, it seemed at that point that nothing could possibly go wrong.

* * *

" **HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!** "

In Stan's body, Bill continued to hold Ford gunpoint a few meters from the crashed car. That distance only increased as Ford continued to back away slowly in fear, with Bill continuously walking toward him at the same speed.

" **MY, OH, MY! STANFORD FILBRICK PINES! MY OLD FRIEND! MY OLD CHUM!** " Bill began with a sinister smile and voice. " **IT'S BEEN A MOMENT, HASN'T IT? HOW HAVE THINGS BEEN?** "

Ford remained silent as Bill kept up his gimmick of using smooth and friendly talk despite being the obvious enemy. No amount of supposed friendly talk could take away from the fact that he was literally pointing a gun at him. His father's gun, to be precise.

Why he kept one stored in his car? He had no idea. Why Shermie never found out about it during all the years he's had the car in his possession? He also had no idea. Why he never bothered to check the glovebox for himself when he got the car? Perhaps he was just being stupid.

More than anything though, Ford was in total shock to see Bill again. His heart had beat harder at that moment than it had ever beat before from any near-death experience he had with Stanley during their various adventures. The demon that has given him more trouble in the past than any other enemy he had ever faced was back. The one who has spent decades haunting his dreams, causing him paranoia, and has spent numerous attempts trying to kill both him and his family.

He was back. Bill Cipher was back.

" **WHAT'S THE MATTER, SIX FINGERS?** " Bill taunted. " **AREN'T YOU GLAD TO SEE ME AGAIN? ACTUALLY...MORE LIKE _HEAR_  ME AGAIN. YOU'VE ALREADY BEEN STARING AT THIS UGLY FACE FOR THE PAST FOUR YEARS, HAVEN'T YA?**" he asked as he gestured toward himself, but appeared as he was also cueing in a joke. " **GET IT? UGLY? BECAUSE YOU TWO ARE...TWINS?** " he quickly realized the joke may not have been as great as it seemed. " **CUT ME SOME SLACK, WOULD YA? I'VE BEEN OUT OF THE GAME FOR AWHILE.** "

"W-w-why…?" Ford stuttered as he struggled to process Bill's presence. "H-how…?"

" **Ah, so you wanna know THOSE answers…** " Bill cut off, realizing what Ford was trying to ask. " **WELL YOU SEE, SIXER, THE HONEST TRUTH HERE IS THAT I NEVER LEFT!** "

"What are you talking about?" Ford questioned, discontinuing his steps back. "We erased you from Stan's mind!"

" **YOU DID, DIDN'T YOU?** " he asked, pointing the gun away before casually tapping the barrel against the side of Stan's head as he looked up to think. " **WELL, GUESS YOU DIDN'T GIVE THAT MIND A GOOD ENOUGH ERASING, HUH?** "

He cackled evilly as he began pacing around, no longer pointing his gun at Ford. Ford realized this and wanted to take this as a chance to run, but instead, he gave in to his curiosity about Bill's intentions. More importantly, how he even came back into Stan's mind in the first place.

" **YOU SEE, STANFORD, SINCE YOU PULLED THAT TRIGGER AND WIPED STAN'S MIND CLEAN, RATHER THAN COMPLETELY WIPING ME ALONG, I FOUND MYSELF BLESSED ENOUGH TO HAVE A PIECE OF MYSELF LEFT ALIVE IN THE CORNER OF THE OLD MAN'S MIND** ," Bill explained to him as he paced around.

"You've been  _blessed?_ " Ford asked, curious about what he meant by this superstitious comment.

" **BLESSED BY A POWERFUL FORCE, STANFORD!** " Bill told him, turning to him with a wide grin. " **WITH ONE INVOKING, I WAS PROMISED A DIFFERENT FORM IN A DIFFERENT TIME! ONE MERE PIECE OF MYSELF LEFT TO LINGER THE REGROWING VOID OF STAN'S MIND! NOT ENOUGH TO DO ANYTHING, OF COURSE. BUT OVER TIME, I REGREW TOO! SLOWLY, I FOUND MYSELF RESURGING A RECOGNIZABLE FORM, WHERE I WAS ACTUALLY ABLE TO HAVE AN INFLUENCE ON STAN HIMSELF! BUT IT STILL WASN'T ENOUGH. AT THE RATE I WAS GROWING BACK, IT'D BE DECADES AND THE OLD MAN PROBABLY WOULD'VE ALREADY BEEN SIX FEET IN THE GROUND! I NEEDED TO GROW FASTER!**   **BUT THERE WAS NOTHING THAT I COULD DO. IF I WAS GONNA GROW BACK FASTER, I WAS GONNA NEED...A LITTLE HELP…** "

Ford's eyes bulged as he knew where he was getting at.

"The creatures from the Nightmare Realm…" Ford remembered. "The incident in the Arctic...back at the mountain! Your cronies knew you were in Stan's mind, and so they used...whatever it was they used...to speed up the growing process!"

Bill turned back to Ford with a demented smile as he began cackling again.

" **ISN'T IT GREAT TO HAVE FRIENDS?** " he asked Ford, shrugging his arms out, gun still in hand. " **TURNS OUT THAT THE MULTIVERSAL LEAK'S INSTABILITY COMBINED WITH THE ELECTRIC PULSING OF STAN'S NERVES WOULD TRIGGER BRAIN WAVES TO RAPIDLY FAST FORWARD MY REGROWING PROCESS! A PROCESS THAT WOULD'VE TAKEN DECADES, ALL TAKING PLACE IN THE SPAN OF A FEW MINUTES**!" He sighed and facepalmed as a separate thought had come to mind. " **IF ONLY ELECTORA'S BRAIN WAS AS STRONG AS HER ELECTRICITY! SHE COULD'VE FINISHED THE PROCESS AND HAVE GOTTEN ME OUT RIGHT THEN AND THERE! THIS IS WHY I DON'T INVITE HER ANYWHERE!** " His demented smile then returned as he looked back over at Ford. " **LUCKILY, SHE STILL PROVIDED JUST ENOUGH CHARGE FOR ME TO FINISH THE JOB MYSELF! IT WOULD TAKE A FEW MORE DAYS, BUT THAT'S A SMALL PRICE TO PAY FOR** _ **ABSOLUTE CONTROL!**_ "

"So that's why Stan has been acting strange!" Ford realized. "You constantly trying to escape put abnormal influences on him that affected his neural processes and emotions. The overly aggressive behavior, the short-term memory, the red eyes, the collapsing...it was all because of  _you!_ "

" **THERE'S THE SIXER I REMEMBER! ALWAYS PUTTING HIS BRAIN IN THE BACKSEAT WHEN HE NEEDS IT MOST!** " Bill confirmed as he cackled sinisterly. " **HERE I AM, STANFORD! IN A DIFFERENT FORM! IN A DIFFERENT TIME!** "

Ford clenched his teeth together as he looked on at Bill angrily. "So what's your grand plan now? Revenge? Starting with killing me? Is that it?!"

" **AW, YOU KNOW ME SO WELL!** " Bill said as he pointed the gun back at him, prompting Ford to get into a defensive stance again. Bill fiddled with the trigger for a bit without actually pulling it as he thought for a moment. He then put on a grin; one that said he had a plan. " **BUT NOT WELL ENOUGH!** "

Ford raised an eyebrow at him as he wondered what he meant this time.

" **AS MUCH AS I'D LOVE TO PUT NICE HOLE IN THAT BIG BRAIN OF YOURS RIGHT THIS SECOND, I CAN'T DO THAT JUST YET!** " Bill admitted. " **ACTUALLY, STANFORD, I'D BE LYING IF I SAID I DIDN'T NEED A LITTLE... _FAVOR…_** "

"Well, you can go to  _hell!_ " Ford shouted as he speedily ducked down and made a quick bolt for behind a tree, just as Bill had pulled the trigger.

_**BANG!** _

Luckily, Ford was quick enough to dodge out of the way of Bill's first shot. What had helped even more was the fact that Bill himself wasn't ready for the violent recoil of the weapon as he fired, and found Stan's upper body flying back after the first shot.

" **GAH!** " Bill shouted in response to the strong recoil. " **I FORGOT ABOUT THE RECOIL ON THESE THINGS!** "

This quick delay had given Ford an opportunity to start running through the forest. Bill quickly caught sight of his escape and proceeded to fire two more shots aimed at his legs. But they were clear misses, the bullets piercing right into surrounding trees.

" **SO YOU CAN STILL WORK THOSE OLD MAN LEGS, HUH?** " Bill called out as he began running after him. " **WELL SO CAN I!** "

Ford had no direct path, nor did he know where he was running exactly. But every tree he passed, he moved behind to use as a potential defense as he ran.

He was caught at a mental crossroad in what he would be able to do. Bill was possessing his brother right now, and so fighting back wasn't exactly a wise solution, as he didn't want to end up hurting or killing Stan. At the same time, he couldn't let Bill get the best of him. His best option would be to somehow take him by surprise and overpower him.

Not that that would be easy, of course.

He continued to ponder other ideas as he ran, hoping he'd come up for something easier. He obviously needed to keep his bounds within the forest, as entering the town itself could lead to others getting hurt or involved. The police getting involved wouldn't end well for either case. This was a problem that only he knew how to handle best. And he didn't know what he'd do if someone innocent and uninvolved ended up getting hurt by Bill.

The kids.

Dipper and Mabel.

He knew the two twins were very curious about Gravity Falls anomalies and oddities. What if they were to hear the gunfire and possibly assume it to be something of that sort rather than an actual psychopathic demon?

 _Okay, perhaps they're not that curious_ , Ford thought to himself, mentally slapping himself in the face for assuming such an unintelligent move to be made by his smart enough niece and nephew.

But he still needed to warn them of what was happening. Whatever happens to himself, he knows Bill will go after the kids next. They need to know what's happening. What's at stake. They can't be unaware of something so vital and dangerous as Bill's return. Especially when he's in possession of Stan's body.

It was at that moment that he looked down at his watch as he ran.

Meridian.

He had forgotten he had inserted temporary batteries earlier in the day to make a call, but it was too busy recalibrating. He pressed the side button and the screen lit up.

Ready to go.

Of course, the longer the screen illuminated, the more the battery drained. Ford had to make a quick move here. He glanced back real quickly to see if Bill was still after him, which he still was, but he had a decent lead on him. He looked ahead again, ensuring he didn't bump into anything as he ran, and then tapped a variety of different touchscreen buttons before reaching a screen that read 'Call Mystery Shack'. He quickly pressed the button and began to dial up the Shack, awaiting a response as he continued to run from a pursuing Bill.

* * *

While the bass of the music thumped through the blaring speakers of Soos's DJ booth, several people kept up the partying attitude, dancing away. While most danced, Dipper and Derrick had met up a few moments ago and were conversing to the side.

"So what do you think, huh?" Dipper asked his friend. "Quite the Summerween, huh?"

"A big costume party without any big attacks or anything else really interesting happening?" he asked, unsure what Dipper was finding fun.

"C'mon, I know after the whole gnome thing, you kind of expect weirdness and all that stuff from hanging out around us, but not every day in Gravity Falls has to be like that," Dipper told him reasonably. "Some days, even as weirdly celebrated as Summerween, are just to have some normal fun."

"I guess, but I don't know," Derrick shrugged. "For a weird town's own weird version of Halloween, I kind of expected something actually  _weird_ to happen."

"Trust me. I get the feeling," Dipper nodded. "I was even coming up with hypothetical creatures that could possibly strike later in the night. But, I mean, as it turns out, nothing so far has really warranted some sort of weird attack or anything. At the very least, no one has slammed the door in the face of a man-eating monster made of loser candy. I hope."

"Eh. It would be a nice change of pace, honestly," Derrick shrugged at the idea. "Anyway, you got a bathroom?"

"Upstairs," Dipper gestured with a finger pointing upwards.

"Be right back," Derrick said as he walked away, shuffling his way through the crowd of people right ahead of him.

As he left, Dipper heard a nearby ringing of a telephone. He glanced to his right as he turned around and saw the home telephone ringing on the table. There were some party attendees that stood closer to it than he did, but they paid no mind to it. It didn't appear any other Shack residents like Mabel or Soos were any closer to it than he was, and so he made an effort to walk over to it.

As he reached it, he picked up the phone from its stand and held it up to his ear, placing his other hand on his other ear so he could better concentrate and hear the caller.

"Hello?" Dipper answered. "Dipper Pines of the Mystery Shack speaking."

"DIPPER?! OH THANK HEAVENS!" Ford's voice came in through the speaker.

"Wha…? Who is this?" Dipper asked in confusion, somewhat recognizing the voice.

"Dipper! Dipper, it's your Great Uncle Ford!" Ford told him.

"What? Great Uncle Ford?!" Dipper questioned in shock.

"Yes!" Ford confirmed. "Dipper, my boy, I don't have a lot of time, so I need you to listen quick! Our old enemy, Bill Cipher, has returned!"

Dipper felt as though his heart was going to sink for a brief moment until he quickly calmed himself. The call was giving him a major sense of deja vu. Feeling as though he understood what was going on, he narrowed his eyes skeptically. "Oh... _really?_ "

"Yes, Dipper, and he's taken possession of your Great Uncle Stan!" Ford added. "I'm currently in the forest of Gravity Falls under his pursuit!"

"The forest, huh…?" Dipper asked skeptically, his face beginning to show annoyance.

"Indeed! Now listen up. He's armed and dangerous, and I'd rather be the one myself to handle him physically at this moment. So I'm sending this as a warning rather than a call for help," Ford told him. "Now while I have you on the line, I need you to do me a favor and…"

"Oh, let me guess, go out into the forest and find you anyway?" Dipper assumed passive-aggressively.

"What? No! I just told you! Bill's armed with a gun and it's too dangerous to…"

"So now you're actually telling me it's dangerous, huh, Mabel?"

"Mabel?! What the- what are you on about, boy?!" Ford asked in utter confusion.

"Oh, shut it, Mabel! You think I forgot about the first time you pulled this little stunt on me?" Dipper asked frustratedly. "You think I'm that forgetful? Well, I'm not. Your impression of Ford may have gotten better, but I'm not buying this cruel joke again!"

"Dipper, what on earth are you talking about?!" Ford asked, still completely confused on what his great-nephew was raging at him about. "This isn't Mabel and this isn't a joke! It's me! Your Great Uncle Ford!"

"Yeah, I'm done with this call, Mabel" Dipper said, preparing to hang up.

"NO! MASON, PLEASE…!"

"AND STOP CALLING ME THAT DAMN NAME!" Dipper raged into the phone before slamming it back onto the stand.

* * *

Ford saw a notification pop up on Meridian that the call had been ended. A few seconds after, the entire device had died again, the screen going completely black.

He had so many feelings rushing through him at that moment, with those most prominent one being confusion. Why Dipper would assume he was Mabel playing a sick joke on him- he had no clue. But clearly, he was distressed by the call.

Meridian was dead again now, and there was no way to call him back. Now he had to figure things out on his own.

He glanced behind himself and saw Bill slowly gaining on him. He fired two more shots at him as he ran, which Ford managed to avoid. He put all of his focus back on running for his life, while also beginning to think out his next method against Bill.

"Alright, time for Plan B…"

* * *

"What's going on, bro?" Mabel asked as she ran over to her brother, who stood with his arms crossed frustratedly by the phone.

"I don't want to talk to you right now," Dipper said stubbornly, not even daring to make eye contact with her.

"Huh? What did I do?" Mabel asked in confusion.

"Seriously, Mabel? Still?" Dipper asked in an annoyed tone. "C'mon, the joke is over. That's why you're over here talking to me."

"What joke?" Mabel asked, still confused. "I came over here because I saw you being a hothead at the telephone. Did a telemarketer call? God, I hate those people too."

"You're not being funny."

"What are you talking about, bro?" Mabel asked, starting to get a little heated by Dipper's sudden change in attitude toward her for no reason. "I didn't do anything to you."

"Right...you  _totally_ weren't just trying to make a fool out of me again on Summerween," Dipper stated sarcastically.

"Is this about the costume again?" Mabel said, getting a bit annoyed herself. "No one's forcing you to keep it on anymore. If you wanna change, go change! I don't care!"

"No, this is about  _you_ trying to fool  _me_ once again that our Great Uncles are running through the forest and that Bill, our greatest enemy, has returned! Well, I fell for it the first time! And it sure wasn't funny then! Do you really think it's gonna be any funnier now?"

"What?! I didn't do that again!" Mabel defended. "I know better than to repeat a prank! You know me! Everything I do is always original!"

"Right, so I guess the original idea here is that I embarrass myself in front of the entire party rather than just you and Ryland, huh?" Dipper asked as he broke into a sarcastic slow clap. "WOO! REAL original, sis!"

"Dipper...I didn't make any phone call pretending to be Grunkle Ford again…" Mabel told him, starting to grow a little concerned by his skepticism.

"Oh, really? So you're saying it wasn't you who called,  _claimed_ that Bill was back,  _claimed_ that Ford was on the run, and then used my real name as an attempt to convince me that it's really him?"

"I mean, that's what I did the first time," Mabel admitted as she rubbed the back of her head. "But if that happened to you again  _just_ now, then I  _promise_ you that wasn't me."

"For God's sake, Mabel, the call was almost beat-for-beat the same as the first time...except you actually used a convincing impression of him instead of a drone…" Dipper explained to her. "...which I admittedly applaud you for. I almost did fall for it at first. But as soon as I heard the rest of the call, I knew it wasn't really him."

"But that wasn't me either! And I can't do a good impression of Grunkle Ford. Does this sound like a good impression to you? ' _Smarts and books and Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons!'_ " Mabel said in her awkward Ford impression, which sounded like she was trying to mimic an old teacher with a messed up accent. And her feminine voice was really showing as she spoke. It was safe to say that it sounded absolutely nothing like Ford's real voice if she really was doing her real impression of him.

"You're...you're just making it bad on purpose, right?" Dipper asked, still somewhat skeptical, though starting to grow a bit convinced that she may be telling the truth.

"Dipper, if I really was trying to prank you, do you really think I'd go through this much of a stretch to do it?" Mabel asked. "Especially when the last time I did it, I unintentionally got you really hurt? Do you really think I'm the kind of person to wanna go and do that to you again?"

Dipper thought for a moment as he looked into her eyes. It became apparent at that point that she really wasn't hiding anything. If there's anything he knew, it's that Mabel was terrible at lying and even hated doing so. Her pranks could be bad, but she was right. She  _wouldn't_ go through this much of a stretch to do one.

"Well if you weren't the one who made that phone call, then that means…" he began as he thought about the call. As he realized the horrible mistake he had made by accusing his sister, his eye bulged and his heart dropped as the truth settled in with him.

Mabel knew what he was thinking and she was feeling everything that he was. "Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford really  _are_ in the forest right now…"

"And Bill really  _has_ come back…" Dipper added as another realization struck him, prompting him to place his hands on the sides of his head. "AND HE REALLY  _IS_ CONTROLLING GRUNKLE STAN!"

"WHAT?! YOU DIDN'T SAY THAT!" Mabel exclaimed, beginning to freak out herself.

"WELL, GRUNKLE FORD SAID IT!" Dipper told her. Their sudden shouting was beginning to attract looks from the surrounding partygoers.

"We have to go after them!" Mabel told him, turning around as if she was going to run for the door.

"Wait, no!" Dipper halted as he pulled her arm back. "Ford also said not to go into the forest! He said it was too dangerous!"

"So you want us to just stay here and do nothing about it?!"

"No! But...maybe there's another way…" Dipper said, struggling to think of another option.

"Screw another way, Dipper!" Mabel shouted, pulling her arm out of his grasp. "If our uncle is willing to risk his life for our safety, then we need to risk ours for his too! C'mon!"

Dipper sighed, somewhat agreeing with what she stated, but remained hesitant. Still, he followed her as she rushed through the crowd. "Well, we can't do this alone! This is Bill we're talking about!"

"We're not doing this alone!" Mabel exclaimed as she marched up to the DJ booth. "Soos!"

"Oh, hey-a dudes!" Soos greeted with a small hand wave. "Party's pretty lit, am I right? Is that what the young dudes are saying nowadays? Lit? It's an interesting description, though I gotta say that despite the strobe lighting, it's still pretty dark in here. I think I'll stick to saying dope. It rolls off the tongue bett-"

"Soos, we need to ditch the party!" Dipper cut off.

"Grunkle Ford is in the forest being chased down by Bill!" Mabel explained to him.

"What? Bill?" Soos asked, recalling the demon. "You mean the triangle guy? He's back?!"

"Apparently!" Dipper nodded with a similar amount of shock.

"We need your help to go out into the woods and find him!" Mabel said.

"Gosh, dudes…" Soos processed as he rubbed the back of his head. "Alright, I can see that this is bad. But, I can't just abandon the party like that! People paid to come here and…"

"SOOS, IF WE DON'T GO NOW, WE'RE RISKING STAN AND FORD'S LIVES!" Dipper cut off, reminding him how vital the situation is.

"Wait, STAN'S OUT THERE TOO?!" Soos asked, his eyes bulging at this realization.

"YES!" Mabel nodded frantically. "GRUNKLE FORD SAID THAT HE'S BEING CONTROLLED BY BILL!"

That was enough to convince Soos. He quickly drew a megaphone from underneath his DJ booth and activated it, holding it up to his mouth, pointing it out at the guests of the party.

" _EVERYBODY OUT!_ " he demanded, his yelling amplified through the megaphone at an ear-grating volume. " _WE NEED ALL THE DUDES AND DUDETTES OUT OF THE BUILDING, STAT! IF WE DON'T KNOW YOU, YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING HERE!_ "

Dipper and Mabel had quickly covered their ears due to the intense volume of Soos's yelling through the megaphone, and so did many other party guests as they began to quickly evacuate the party. Ironically enough, Abuelita continued to sleep peacefully despite Soos's loud megaphone wailing.

While guests began to leave through the front door, people like Melody, Ryland, and Evan stuck around in place as they looked around within the living room in confusion as to what was happening. Waddles even ran over to Mabel's side as the room cleared out.

" _SORRY TO DO THIS TO YA DUDES, BUT THIS IS A SERIOUS SITUATION!_ " Soos exclaimed through the megaphone as the guests continued to leave the Shack one-by-one through the front door. " _HAPPY SUMMERWEEN, THOUGH! ALSO, T-SHIRTS WILL BE ON SALE NEXT MONDAY, SO BE SURE TO CHECK THAT OUT WHENEVER YOU DUDES HAVE A CHANCE!_ "

Soos then slammed the door shut, to which Derrick had proceeded to walk back down the steps, and quickly caught sight of the suddenly emptying room compared to how packed it had been before. "The hell? I go to the bathroom for a few minutes and apparently there's an evacuation?" he claimed as he walked up beside Dipper.

"Soos, what on earth is going on?" Melody asked in a concerned voice as she ran over to him. "Why are we kicking everyone out?"

"Woah, boss, is everything alright?" Ryland asked, raising an eyebrow in concern as he and Evan walked closer to the ordeal.

"Yo, Soos!" Wendy's voice called out as she suddenly ran inside the Shack to see what was up. "Everyone just bailed. What's going on?"

"Look, everyone, something's come up," Soos told them, putting his megaphone to the side.

"Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford are in the woods and they're in trouble!" Mabel explained as she lifted up Waddles in her hands.

"We need to go after them!" Dipper added.

"Woah, the Stan bros are back?" Wendy asked, eyebrows raising in slight shock.

"Yeah, and Bill too!" Mabel added for her.

"Woah, woah, woah... _BILL_  is back?!" Wendy questioned further, eyes now showing complete shock.

"Wait, is this the same Bill that you used to tell me about back in school?" Derrick asked Dipper, remembering all the times he had previously mentioned the triangular demon to him.

"Uh...who's Bill?" Ryland intervened with a raised hand, genuinely having no idea what anyone was talking about.

"GUYS!" Dipper shouted to grab everyone's attention, getting frustrated by how many questions were coming up all at once. "Look, there's too much to explain and right now, there's just not enough time to explain it all."

"We can talk about all of this later. Right now, we just need as much help as we can get in facing Bill," Mabel said.

"Well, if you two and Soos are going, then I'm obviously going," Wendy said, walking forward. "I'm like the only other one here who really knows the Stans. This matters to me too."

"I'll come too," Ryland pitched in. "I don't know who Bill is, but if he's enemy to you guys, then he's an enemy to me."

"Me too," Evan said, stepping forward.

"No, no, no," Ryland shook his head as he pushed Evan back. "You're staying here."

"But I wanna help!" Evan said.

"You're my little brother. I brought you with me tonight to have fun, not to put you in danger," Ryland told him.

"But-"

"No buts," Ryland cut off. "Trust me, bro. I'm already worried about what I'm getting myself into. I don't want to have to worry about you at the same."

"Same for you, Melody," Soos branched off of Ryland's statement as he placed his hand on Melody's shoulder. "I need you to stay here and watch after Abuelita."

"What? No, Soos, I gotta come with y-"

"No! You can't!" Soos exclaimed, placing both his hands on her shoulders as he put his face up to hers. "Trust me, babe. We've dealt with Bill before! He's too dangerous! I couldn't live with myself if I let you come along and you end up getting hurt out there! The same goes for Abuelita. Please, Melody..."

Melody looked hesitant for a second but gave him a look of assurance.

It was surprising to Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, and Ryland to see Soos so serious for once. Sure, he got serious when the people he loves and cares for is in danger, but seeing how he treated Melody at that moment was like seeing another side of him. Like you could see the difference in how he cared for her compared to anyone else.

Soos marched his way toward the front door, opening it. He stood aside, gesturing for the others to go ahead of him.

Mabel placed Waddles back on the ground. "Stay behind me, okay?" she told him as she pointed back and forth between herself and him. Waddles gave a normal oink in response as he followed her outside the door.

Dipper looked over at Derrick. "Look, man, you don't have to come along. This isn't your fight."

"Are you kidding? This is the kind of thing I've been waiting for all night!" Derrick said as he began walking toward the door. "I'll be damned if I miss an encounter with the big bad you were always on about."

Dipper knew Derrick was just in for the thrill of what seemed to be another adventure to him. He knew that he didn't know what he was getting himself into. Regardless, he walked alongside him as he walked out the front door.

As the two proceeded to walk outside, Wendy soon followed behind, cracking her knuckles in preparation for what was to come. It had been awhile since she went out on a mission of any sort with the Pines. Even though this one was more impromptu than anything, this was the most action she was getting herself involved in since Weirdmageddon.

"God, I've been waiting for something to fight," Wendy stated as she walked up beside Dipper. "And Bill, of all people? Man, I can't wait to bend his angles."

"Well, Ford said Bill was possessing Stan," Dipper clarified for her. "So I'm not sure you'll wanna do  _that_."

"Then I'll just try not to hit  _too_ hard then," Wendy assured him, which prompted a small smirk out of Dipper despite the current stakes.

Ryland stood back inside the Shack beside Evan. He placed a hand on his shoulder, giving him a look that clearly said 'Stay here, and don't follow me.' Evan gave him a look of slight annoyance, but let out a sigh as he came to terms with the idea of staying behind. With that look of mutual understanding, Ryland proceeded to walk out the door, following the others.

Soos prepared to follow as well but looked over at Melody, who just stared on at him with a look of concern.

"Be careful, sweetie," she told him.

Soos grabbed a hold of the bill of his Lario hat and pulled it down as he gave her an assuring nod. He then stepped out of the house, closing the door right behind him, leaving her with Evan and Abuelita. He then looked out into the woods where everyone was already heading into. Being the oldest of the group, he was the most responsible for everyone at that moment, and therefore needed to live up to the role of being a good and reliable leader.

However, the fact that he was already yards behind the others who had already proceeded on without him wasn't doing his role much justice.

"Wait up, you guys!" he exclaimed to the others as he ran after them.

* * *

Back in the forest, Bill slowly and quietly crept through the woods with his gun held up readily. He held his sinister grin as he looked around. He had eventually lost Ford during his pursuit, and now he was in a state of watching his surroundings at every moment. Every time something moved or he heard a noise, he turned. He wasn't really paranoid, but more so excited to be clashing with his old puppet again after so long.

" **WHERE ARE YA, FORDSY?** " Bill called out in an intimidating sing-song voice as he passed by a tree, looking right behind it, but to find nothing. " **I THOUGHT YOU'D LIKE REUNITING WITH YOUR OLD PAL?** "

Of course, there was the possibility that Ford could've just ran away and wasn't anywhere near him anymore.

However, he knew he didn't do that. He knew because it would've been the  _wise_  thing to do. Ford was a smart guy, but he knew him enough to know that not everything he did was particularly  _wise_.

He knew he was still around. He knew it.

He  _felt_ it.

" **AIN'T THAT WHY YOU CAME BACK TO GRAVITY FALLS?** " Bill asked as he began to walk past a set of trees. " **TO REUNITE WITH YOUR OLD FRIENDS?** "

" _AHHHHH!_ " Ford's scream called out as he jumped down from a tree branch above where he had been hiding.

Bill attempted to turn around, but was too slow, as he soon found Ford's arms wrapped around Stan's neck, holding him tight. Bill placed Stan's hand on his arm, trying to resist his headlock, but found himself failing to struggle free.

This proved to be little issue, however, as his arms were still free. And in Stan's right hand, he still held Filbrick's gun. As a means of escape, he quickly bashed the gun against the side of Ford's head as hard as he could. The angle of the hit was odd and nearly missed, but it still did what it needed to. Ford reacted to the hit with a wince of pain as he promptly let go of his arms around Stan's neck.

" **WOW! THAT MUST'VE BEEN WORTH IT!** " Bill exclaimed as he began to pick himself back up from the ground as Ford rubbed the side of his face where he had been struck.

Bill then gave a laugh as he prepared to aim the gun back at Ford. At the same time that Bill began to put pressure on the trigger, Ford quickly decided to react and grabbed a hold of Stan's equipped arm, violently pushing it upward as fast as he could. This sudden action resulted in Bill aiming the gun upwards until Ford had pushed his arm hard enough to where it ended up tapping against his forehead.

However, this further put pressure on Bill and his grip on the trigger had increased just as the top of the gun had back contact with the tip of his forehead.

_**BANG!** _

* * *

"GRUNKLE FORD?!" Mabel called out as she walked through the woods. Due to the darkness of the night, she had a hard time getting a good sight of her surroundings, mostly following after Waddles, as his lighter colors stood out in the dark.

"GREAT UNCLE FORD?!" Dipper called out a little louder than Mabel did, also walking along.

"MR. PINES?!" Soos also called out, walking out right behind the two.

"ANYONE OUT THERE?!" Ryland called out as well.

"C'mon, is this seriously our only way of finding them? Just shouting their name?" Derrick asked with a shrug, walking casually alongside as well.

"You're not even trying to do anything!" Mabel exclaimed as she narrowed her eyes at him.

"Oh, I'm sorry that I haven't been contributing to the world's useless yelling contest," Derrick said sarcastically.

"You're sure one to talk about being useless," Mabel rebuked.

"Look, in a less douchey way, I kinda have to agree that this yelling hasn't been doing anything so far," Wendy pitched in.

"These woods are huge! If they're a mile out, then of course the screaming isn't gonna do anything! But we don't know how far they are!" Mabel defended.

"I get it, but we can't place all of our bets of finding the Stans on walking and screaming all night," Wendy told her. "We need options."

"Split up maybe?" Ryland suggested.

" _Hell no_ ," Dipper immediately refused. "If this is Bill we're talking about, then the last thing any of us would wanna do is split up. Especially in the woods at night."

"Dipper's right," Wendy agreed. "Splitting up is a terrible idea."

" _Alright, geez, it was just a suggestion_ ," Ryland whispered to himself innocently.

"There's gotta be something else we can use from that phone call, Dipper," Mabel said as she walked up beside him. "Is there anything that Grunkle Ford said that we might be able to use as a lead?"

"I'm trying to remember," Dipper claimed as he thought back to the phone call. "He just said Bill possessed Stan. Something about him being armed and dangerous."

Mabel's eyes bulged as she suddenly placed her hand on Dipper's chest, forcing him to come to a stop. "Armed with  _what?_ " she asked as she gave him a look of complete concern.

_BANG!_

The sound of the distant gunshot had taken everyone by surprise. Even Waddles had immediately begun squealing in fear with it as he ran over by Mabel's side, quivering. Everyone turned their heads right, where the shot had seemingly sounded from. The coincidence of the shot following their discussion left many hearts dropping in unison.

"He might've said gun..." Dipper claimed as he looked back over at Mabel.

"Relax, dude," Soos said calmly and heartily. "It's just a firework. You know how it is. Fourth of July celebrations and all."

"Soos, it's June 17th. Summerween. Not the Fourth of July," Wendy corrected.

"Oh…" Soos realized, his heart dropping as he began to grow nervous as well.

"Let's just call  _that_ our lead for now, shall we?" Ryland suggested, pointing off in the direction where the shot had been heard from.

"Agreed!" Dipper nodded as he began running in the direction of the shot. "Let's go!"

* * *

The ringing was loud and painful. Ford struggled to process any further thoughts on Bill as his ears just continued to ring. Having his head mere inches away from the barrel of a gun as it went off with absolutely no ear protection was probably one of his worst ideas. Although it did turn out to prevent him from taking a shot himself, he felt as though he was enduring something just as bad with the severe deafening ring in his ears.

He cupped his ears with his hands as he dropped to his knees, groaning in agony. He shut his eyes tightly as he tried to focus on ignoring the pain, but found it way too difficult. The painful ringing continued, and it was barely dying down.

" **WHAT'S THIS?** " Bill asked as he stood over Ford with his gun. " **CAN'T HANDLE A LITTLE EAR RINGING, FORD? I THOUGHT YOU WERE TOUGHER THAN THAT!** "

Ford couldn't hear a word he said but noticed that he seemed completely unfazed by the fact that a bullet had been fired inches from his ears. Then again, Bill lives for that type of pain. He probably couldn't hear anything either, but he didn't seem to mind that.

Suddenly, Bill took the gun and bashed Ford on the side of the face with it again. This time, the hit was much more direct and had enough strength to send him collapsing to the ground. He just laughed as he watched Ford crawl and spit out a bit of blood from his mouth. The ringing in his ears was starting to go away, but he knew that the ringing was about to be the least of his problems.

" **YEAH, GO AHEAD AND CRAWL!** " Bill said as he kicked Ford over so his front side faced upwards, ending his crawl. He then pointed the gun straight at his thigh. " **IN FACT, I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU TRY TO CRAWL AFTER** _ **THIS**_ **!** "

_Click._

"Huh?" Bill questioned as he looked down at the gun, which didn't fire a bullet.

_Click. Click._

"Hahaha," Ford laughed lightly as he began to pick himself up from the ground. "Well, as you can see, Bill- after  _that_ , I can do much more than just crawl. I can still stand. I can still kick. But that gun...I don't think it can still fire. Not without another clip that is...which you obviously don't have…"

Bill glanced back and forth between him and the gun. Eventually, he returned back to his wide grin as he looked back at Ford.

" **AH, WHO CARES?** " he shrugged as he dropped Filbrick's gun on the ground carelessly. " **I DON'T NEED A GUN TO BEAT THE HELL OUT OF _YOU!_** "

At that moment, he lunged his fist directly at Ford's face, making direct contact, knocking him back a bit. He didn't stop there, however, as he kept running after him as he continuously knocked him back with each subsequent punch he threw. When Ford finally focused back on the fight, he managed to dodge a few punches.

However, it led to Bill going for other parts of his body instead, using other parts of Stan's body. When Ford dodged a punch, Bill quickly retaliated with a knee to his stomach, which he would then top off with the return of the punch he had missed. Every punch and kick was hard enough to leave some sort of mark, whether it'd be a bruise or a cut against the skin. Bill was putting his all into senselessly beating up Ford.

Ford was hardly even trying to fight back, however. Not because he couldn't, but because he didn't want to hurt his own brother. He reminded himself that Bill was still in his brother's body and that any damage that he could do wouldn't be done to Bill, but Stan himself.

Although, the more punches and kicks he took, the harder it was to resist the urge to fight back. And eventually, with a few more whacks and bruises, Ford couldn't take it anymore. He wasn't going to let himself get beaten to death because he didn't bother to defend himself. He didn't want to hurt Stan's body, but he was already taking way too much damage to his own body himself to not do something about it.

When Bill threw his next punch, rather than dodging it, Ford caught it and held it tight.

" **HUH?** " Bill questioned in surprise by Ford's sudden action.

He wasn't going to let this move stop him, though, as he threw a punch with his other hand instead. However, Ford caught this one too, holding it tight.

Without a tight grasp on both of Stan's fists, he stretched them out upwards and outwards, which seemed to surprise Bill. He seemed to be trying to fight against Ford's hold, but couldn't.

Ford then brought his face closer to Stan's and looked directly into Bill's eyes.

"Let go of my brother…" he said in a low, yet livid voice.

He then pushed both of Stan's fists against his face, sending Bill backward a bit. However, while still being in his reach, Ford topped it off with two violent punches to the face.

Bill appeared slightly disoriented and caught off guard by Ford's sudden willingness to fight back. He clenched Stan's fist and began charging at Ford, aiming for another face punch. However, Ford caught it yet again and instead, used his own force to push him back against a tree with his outstretched hand.

Back pinned to a tree, Bill found himself somewhat stuck and without much opportunity to get away. He looked up at Ford and narrowed his eyes as Ford angrily stared him back down.

He raised a fist before preparing another lunge.

"LET!"

_POW!_

"GO!"

_POW!_

"OF!"

_POW!_

"MY!"

_POW!_

"BROTHER!"

_POW!_

He kept continuously punching Stan's face against the tree for another moment, until he let go of his fist, dropping his body to the ground. As he dropped, Stan fell to his knees and stared down as he spat out blood and began breathing heavily. It was at that moment that Ford prepared to kick him and continue trying to beat Bill further.

"STANFORD, STOP!" Stan's voice suddenly cried out, holding his arm up helplessly as he kept his face and the rest of his body facing down weakly. "STANFORD, IT'S ME!"

" _S-Stan?_ " Ford stuttered, eyes bulging in horror as he heard the voice of his brother again.

"Stanford...please…" Stan said weakly as he crawled on the ground. "Why are you doing this to me?" he asked tearfully.

"What…?"

"We were on the road together a second ago…" Stan reminded him. "I was driving and we were almost in Gravity Falls! Now you're beating up your own bro in the woods? Your own family?!"

"Stanley, I can explain!" Ford tried to tell him, reaching out to him before his hands were pushed away.

"Explain what?" Stan asked. "How disappointed Ma would be? Beating up her little free spirit for no reason?"

The mention of Ma sent a wave of emotions washing over Ford. The sadness of her memory, confusion over her mention, and frustration over his actions.

"...or is there a reason?" Stan continued as he stared at the ground, refusing to look up at Ford. "Because you're still mad at me for ruining your project when we were in high school? Still haven't forgiven me for that Ford? Now you're trying to empty out all that anger built up inside after all these years?"

Ford was now completely overwhelmed with emotions over various different things now. The mention of the science project and Stan crying over that being the reason for getting beaten up only peaked his feelings of absolute guilt. He was beginning to tear up just listening to Stan.

"IS THAT IT, FORD?!" Stan shouted as Ford shut his eyes tightly, trying to fight back tears. "YOU COULDN'T JUST LEARN TO FORGIVE AND FORGET?! IS  _THIS_ WHAT YOU WANTED?!"

Ford weakly dropped to his knees and placed his hands over his face as he began to weep over his guilty feelings. "I'm sorry, Stanley! I didn't mean to! I'm so,  _so sorry!_ "

" **BET YOU ARE!** "

Ford suddenly stopped weeping as he took his hands off his face to look up. "W-what…?"

_WHACK!_

_THUD!_

Ford took a violent punch to the side of his face, forcing him back to the ground. That punch took a lot out of him, and he was too weak to even move. He was nearly knocked out, only managing to hold onto a sliver of unfocused consciousness as he laid on the ground.

" **HAHAHA!** " Bill's voice re-emerged from Stan's body, grinning sinisterly again. " **YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DO A GOOD IMPRESSION OF YOUR BROTHER, SIXER! EXCEPT, IT'S LESS OF AN IMPRESSION AND MORE OF A FULL ON VOICE CHANGE! BET YA FORGOT I COULD DO THAT, HUH?** "

Ford groaned weakly as he continued to lay mostly motionless on his side. Bill then walked over to him, and grabbed ahold of the back of his coat and began to drag him through the woods.

" **I GOTTA HAND IT TO YA, FORD!** " Bill stated as he walked through the forest. " **YOU GOT PRETTY FAR INTO THESE WOODS HERE WHEN YOU WERE RUNNING FROM ME! SO FAR, IN FACT…** "

He suddenly stopped and tossed Ford's body a few feet forward in front of him into an open spot of land in the middle of the forest, sending him face down to the ground. Ford weakly lifted his head up so he could see where they were and what was happening. Upon doing so, a chill went down his spine upon catching sight of what was right ahead of them.

" **... THAT YOU BASICALLY BROUGHT ME _RIGHT_  WHERE I WANTED US TO GO!**"

Sunken a few inches into the dirt was a stone petrification of Bill's normal form. It was covered in moss and vines and other overgrown plants and weeds. A long vine had even wrapped itself completely around his outstretched hand as if he was making a deal.

That deal being the final one he had made before getting wiped from Stan's mind.

Or that they thought he had been…

"Your physical form…" Ford said weakly as he stared on at it with his bulged eyes.

" **A MIRACLE IT'S SURVIVED OUT HERE FOR SO LONG, HUH?** " Bill asked as he stood one of Stan's feet on top of Ford's head, forcefully pushing his chin to the ground. " **YOU SEE, STANFORD, HERE'S MY REAL ISSUE: WHILE I WAS ABLE TO REGROW WITHIN A HUMAN MIND, I DON'T HAVE MY ORIGINAL CONTROL OVER IT! I MAY BE IN CONTROL OF STANLEY NOW, BUT I DON'T HAVE ALL OF MY OLD POWERS! I CAN'T KICK HIM OUT, NOR CAN I FREE MYSELF! I'M FORCED TO SHARE THIS HIDEOUS, WEAK, AND AGING BODY WITH AN ELDERLY IMBECILE! AND THERE'S NOTHING THAT I CAN DO ABOUT IT!** "

He had an annoyed look for a second as he recalled his circumstances. But soon, that look of annoyance reverted back to wide, demented smile as he turned to look back down at Ford.

" **BUT THERE'S SOMETHING THAT YOU CAN...** "

"What are you getting at-"

Bill cut him off by violently kicking him in the gut, which sent him rolling over closer toward the statue. He groaned in pain as he wrapped his arms around his stomach. Bill then walked back over to him and grabbed the neck of his coat, pulling him up to his knees so he came face to face with his petrified form and outstretched hand.

" **I NEED YOU TO S** **HAKE THE HAND, STANFORD!** " Bill ordered him aggressively. " **I CAN'T MAKE DEALS WHILE I'M TRAPPED WITHIN A BODY I DON'T HAVE COMPLETE CONTROL OVER! BUT YOU SHAKING THE HAND OF MY REAL FORM WILL BRING ME MY FREEDOM FROM THIS BODY!** "

"Please. Let you back out into the open world to cause as must chaos as you can?" Ford asked. "After all you've done to me? After all that you've done to my family? You really think that  _I'm_ going to set you free? Just like that?!"

" **OH, YES, I DO…** " Bill claimed as he grabbed a sharp-edged branch growing from a tree beside the statue. He then held it up to Stan's neck. " **BECAUSE IF YOU DON'T, YOUR BROTHER AIN'T GONNA HAVE MUCH OF A HEAD ANYMORE! HAHAHA!** "

"You won't!" Ford said confidently.

" **WOULDN'T I**?"

"No, you wouldn't," Ford stated again, narrowing his eyes daringly at him. "Because you sharing a mind with Stan and not having complete possession over it means you're just as much a part of that body as he is. If you kill Stan, you'll just kill yourself."

" **YOU THINK SO, HUH?** " Bill asked as if everything Ford was suggesting was still wrong. " **WELL, NEARLY GETTING HIT BY A CAR BACK IN WYOMING SEEMED TO GET A SPOOK OUT OF YA!** "

"You didn't do that to try and kill Stan," Ford told him. "You did that to get my attention. You heard me calling after Stan and kept walking. It was part of your plan to get us back on the road to Gravity Falls. If you were that desperate to get Stan killed, you would've done it long ago. Whether it'd be on the boat while being stuck out in the middle of the ocean or somewhere in Jersey. You had plenty of other chances. Admit it, Cipher. You knew what you were doing."

As Ford told this to Bill, he could see Bill's smile fade into a look of hesitation, which further supported his claims. In his current form, there was no way Bill could kill Stan without killing himself.

"We both know that you didn't wait four years to come back just to die..."

Bill brought the sharp-edged branch away from his neck as he gave Ford a daring look, essentially confirming his thoughts.

" **LOOKS LIKE YOUR BRAIN FINALLY DECIDED TO KICK IN,** " Bill said with a sigh. " **YOU'RE RIGHT. I DIDN'T COME THIS FAR JUST TO THROW IT ALL AWAY. I CAN'T KILL STAN. NOT _YET_ , ANYWAY.**"

Then he smiled again as he clenched the branch in his hands.

" **BUT I CAN STILL KILL** _ **YOU!**_ "

He turned around and tackled Ford to the ground, trying to force the sharp end of the branch at his neck. But Ford put in all his remaining strength into resisting the branch.

" **IT DOESN'T...NEED TO END THIS WAY, STANFORD!** " Bill exclaimed as he struggled to try and force the branch at him. " **ALL YOU...HAVE TO DO...IS SHAKE...THE STATUE'S...HAND!** "

Ford gave struggling grunts as he continued to resist the branch. " _Never!_  I'll die before I  _ever_ help you again!"

" **SUIT...YOURSELF!** "

"GREAT UNCLE FORD!"

"GRUNKLE STAN!"

Ford and Bill's heads both immediately turned as these familiar voices suddenly called through the woods. As they looked up, they immediately caught glimpse of Dipper, Mabel, Soos, Wendy, Ryland, Derrick, and Waddles running into the scene, stopping a good distance away as they looked at what was happening.

"KIDS!" Ford shouted, suddenly overwhelmed with joy at seeing his great niece and nephew again. Though he was growing confused as to why they were dressed like him and Stan four years ago.

Dipper and Mabel's eyes soon glanced straight into Stan's, which they quickly realized to be Bill's once they caught sight of the yellow glow.

"BILL!" Dipper and Mabel shouted fearfully in unison.

" **KIDS!** " Bill shouted with an amused look at he caught sight of the twins again.

"Soos?" Soos had said aloud, grabbing odd looks from everyone else.

"SOOS!" Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, and Ryland shouted in slight annoyance.

"Sorry, dudes! I'm just really confused right now on why we're all shouting each other's names!" Soos admitted, raising his arms defensively.

" **AH, WOULD YOU LOOK HERE!** " Bill shouted as he got off of Ford, immediately pulling his back off the ground so he could wrap one of Stan's arms around his neck, using the other hand to hold the sharp branch up to his neck, holding him hostage. " **IT'S A GOOD OL' PINES FAMILY REUNION! PINE TREE AND SHOOTING STAR! ALL GROWN UP!** " His eyes then turned toward Wendy and Soos as he recognized them. " **AND HOW COULD ANYONE FORGET ABOUT ICE BAG AND QUESTION MARK! OH WAIT! I DID UNTIL I ACTUALLY NOTICED YOU TWO! HAHAHA!** "

"C'mon dude! My fatness has to be a quality worth remembering!" Soos stated.

"Not the time, Soos!" Wendy told him with an eye roll.

"Kids...what are you doing here?" Ford said as he tried struggling his way out of Bill's grasp. "Dipper, I thought I told you…"

"Forget that, Great Uncle Ford!" Dipper called out.

"We're here to help!" Mabel added, taking a few steps forward.

" **WELL, IF YOU TAKE ANY STEP FURTHER, THERE WON'T BE ANYTHING LEFT OF HIM TO HELP!** " Bill shouted as he took a few steps backward, gesturing toward the fact that he still held Ford hostage with a sharp branch at his neck.

"Mabel!" Dipper called out to her as he stuck his arm out and quickly pulled her back.

"B-but…" Mabel said hesitantly as she wondered how they were to go about helping. "Grunkle Ford, what do we do?"

"I don't know, kids," Ford admitted. "But it's not too late to go back to the Shack."

"We're not going back to the Shack!" Dipper assured him.

" **THEN I KNOW WHAT YOU CAN DO WHILE YOU'RE HERE!** " Bill told him as he pointed out the stone petrification. " **YOU SEE THAT STONE STATUE OVER THERE THAT LOOKS LIKE A YOUNGER, MORE HANDSOME VERSION OF ME? ONE OF YOU- SHAKE HIS HAND!** "

"KIDS, DON'T!" Ford shouted desperately. "If you do, then you'll be setting Bill fr-!"

Bill quickly shut Ford up by kicking the back of his leg joint to the ground, bending it and locking him in place, while also causing a sharp wince of pain from him.

" **DO IT OR YOUR OLD MAN GETS IT!** " Bill exclaimed, growing impatient.

"Dipper, what are we supposed to do now?" Mabel turned to him, growing distressed and desperate.

"I-I don't know!" Dipper stuttered, trying to quickly think of a plan. "He wants us to shake the statue's hand, but that clearly does something bad. But if we don't, he kills Ford…"

"There's gotta be another way around this!" Mabel said as she turned to the others. "Does anyone else have a plan?"

Soos, Wendy, and Ryland all exchanged unsure looks with one another. However, Dipper looked around and quickly noticed that Derrick wasn't present anymore.

"Wait a minute...guys, where's Derrick?" he asked, prompting the others to look at their surroundings for him. "He was just with us a minute ago, wasn't he? Where'd he go?"

"Ah, forget him, Dipper! He's useless!" Mabel said, turning his attention back the situation at hand. "We have other things to worry about than a friend of yours who couldn't care less about anyone else but himself!"

" **YOU'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME HERE!** " Bill shouted at the group impatiently, grabbing their attention again.

As their attention turned back to Bill, there was an unnoticed, hooded figure behind Bill. The figure slowly and silently crept up behind him while he was distracted by the others.

" **MAYBE I NEED TO DRAW A LITTLE _BLOOD_  IN ORDER TO SPEED YOU UP!**" Bill suggested as he lightly pressed the sharp branch against the skin of Ford's neck. Ford immediately let out another painful wince as the branch edges gave him a light cut.

"NO!" Mabel cried out, beginning to tear up as she noticed Ford's reaction.

" **PLEASE** **! IT WAS ONLY A KNICK!** " Bill assured them. " **BUT I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT IT WILL GET A LOT WORSE IF YOU KEEP PUTTING OFF THAT HANDSHAKE!** "

"GAAAHHHHH!" a voice suddenly yelled as the figure behind Bill suddenly jumped up to ambush him.

The yell proved to alert Bill much too soon, however. He quickly threw Ford onto the ground and turned around to catch the ambusher in his open hand. He proceeded to then wrap his arm around the ambusher's neck the same way he had done to Ford. As the ambusher's face became more visible in the moonlight, the others quickly identified him as Derrick, who was now being held hostage instead of Ford.

"ALRIGHT! THAT WAS A HUGE MISTAKE!" he exclaimed as he now struggled to escape Bill's grasp.

"Derrick?!" Dipper and Mabel exclaimed at the same time in surprise.

"Sorry, guys. I tried," Derrick told them, feeling guilty for his failed attempt at saving Ford. "Didn't work out as well as I had hoped."

" **NOW I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE, BUT LET ME BE THE FIRST TO TELL YOU, KID!** " Bill told Derrick as he tightened his grip on his neck and began backing up further away from Ford and the others. " **DON'T. BE. A HERO.** "

"I'd rather be a hero than whatever  _you_ are," Derrick replied as he narrowed his eyes at him.

" **YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM.** "

Freed from Bill's grasp, Ford stood himself up from the ground, wiping the blood drawn from the cut on his neck. He then turned over to look back at Bill and how he was holding onto a boy he had never seen before. A young teen, that is.

"Bill, let the boy go!" Ford demanded.

" **WOW, YOU SEEM TO CARE A LOT ABOUT A KID THAT YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW!** " Bill said with a light chuckle.

"This is between you and me, Bill!" Ford reminded him. "This doesn't need outside involvement!"

" **WELL, THIS OUTSIDE INVOLVEMENT SEEMS TO THINK OTHERWISE!** " Bill argued, gesturing to Derrick.

"The name's Derrick, man…" Derrick clarified for him. "...or woman...or whatever the hell you are..."

" **SHUT UP!** "

"Bill, please…" Ford attempted to reason.

" **SHAKE THE STATUE'S HAND, FORD!** " Bill ordered aggressively as he used the branch to point toward it. " **OR I PROMISE YOU...WHETHER IT'S ONE OF YOURS OR NOT...A KID IS GOING TO DIE TONIGHT!** "

Ford began to consider giving in to Bill's request, despite how much he didn't want to. However, with Bill holding another innocent boy hostage, he was running out of options. The last thing he wanted was to have anyone else get hurt.

However, it was at that moment, he made a quick glance upwards in the tree above him. Up there, he had made note of something he had completely forgotten about until that moment. His eyes then glanced back at Bill and gave him a questionable look as recalled the last statement about a kid dying tonight.

"Will one now?" he asked, tilting his head; unsure.

" **YES, ONE WILL!** " Bill assured him, getting frustrated by this statement made to challenge him. " **I WILL SWALLOW ONE** _ **WHOLE**_ **IF I HAVE TO!** "

"You're not only one…" Ford stated as he crossed his arms and smirked at him.

" **WHAT?** "

_SQUISH!_

" _ **MMMMMMMMMM!**_ "

Bill began screaming as he suddenly found Stan's head completely wrapped around and trapped within the mouth of the baby Snacken, which had ambushed him from the trees above. He had even dropped his hold of Derrick and the sharp branch as the Snacken had leaped on him. He stepped away a few inches as he tried to pull the Snacken off his head. Each pull that he made only prompted it to further tighten its hold.

At that moment, he was left vulnerable. And everyone took this as their chance.

"GET HIM!" Dipper shouted at the others.

They had quickly begun running at Bill, where him, Mabel, Soos, and Wendy quickly jumped on each of Stan's open limbs. Dipper and Mabel had each taken hold of an arm, while Wendy and Soos both took his legs. The four had quickly pinned him down to the ground, using their combined weights and strength to prevent Bill from moving a muscle. Ryland walked alongside Waddles to the four, examining the situation.

"Well, it looks like you've got him," Ryland stated as he placed a hand on his waist.

Ford then proceeded to casually walk over toward Bill, kneeling down and placing his hand on the Snacken. He very quickly pulled the creature from his face and held it back in his hand, to which it had quickly crawled over onto his shoulder.

"Good one," he told it as he gently stroked it with the back of his hand, to which it responded with a pleased look.

"We did it! We got him!" Dipper exclaimed as he held down Stan's arm with all his weight.

" **HAHAHA!** " Bill cackled as he lay pinned down to the ground. " **WHAT IS THIS? IS THIS HOW YOU BEAT ME? PINNING ME TO THE GROUND? PLEASE!** "

"I wouldn't say we've quite beaten you yet, Bill," Ford admitted as he stood over him. "But we've surely put you in position to which we now have the upper hand."

" **MAYBE SO! BUT I'M STILL HERE!** " Bill reminded him. " **I STILL HAVE CONTROL OF YOUR BROTHER'S BODY! AND YOU CAN'T KEEP ME PINNED FOREVER! SOONER OR LATER, ONE OF YOU WILL SLIP UP! TRY TO CATCH ME THEN!** "

"Well, we'll keep you pinned all night if we have to!" Soos said confidently as he hugged his leg.

"Look, I'm not saying I wouldn't if we had to, but I'd rather not…" Wendy admitted as she held Stan's other leg down.

"Great Uncle Ford, what are we supposed to do with Bill now?" Dipper asked as he looked up at Ford, who was stroking his chin.

"How do we get Stan back?" Mabel asked, looking into Bill's glowing yellow eyes, hoping they'll revert back to Stan's normal eyes at some point.

"I'm unsure. Bill isn't taking normal possession over Stan. More-so, he's taking priority in a shared mind with him," Ford explained. "We can't drive him out, but perhaps, we can somehow weaken him enough so that Stan can take mental priority again and regain control."

" **YEAH, 'WEAKEN ME',** " Bill restated amusedly. " **GOOD LUCK WITH THAT! I MAY NOT HAVE FULL POSSESSION, BUT I LIVE FOR PAIN! DO WHAT YOU WANT TO THIS BODY, BUT YOU CAN'T HURT ME!** "

At that moment, Mabel's eyes bulged.

"Mabel's got an idea!" Her head then turned over to Ryland, who was just standing to the side looking over the entire ordeal. "Ryland, you have your phone and headphones on you?"

He nodded as he took out his cellphone and set of wired earbuds from the inside of his Constable jacket.

"You got that playlist I sent you the other day?" she asked.

"Yeah,  _Bippity Boppin' Bops_ , right?" Ryland assumed as he looked through his music playlists on his phone.

"That's the one!" Mabel nodded. "Hook Bill up. I have a good feeling he might be in the  _Bippity Boppin'_  mood."

Ryland wasn't sure where this was leading, but he did as she told him. He kneeled over beside Stan's head and put both earbuds on him.

"Mabel, what are you doing?" Dipper asked, wondering where she was going with this idea of hers.

"Just trust me on this," she told him.

" **WHAT IS THIS?** " Bill questioned as the earbuds were placed on Stan. " **YOU'RE GONNA PLAY A BUNCH OF LULLABIES FOR ME? HOPING TO TIRE ME OUT OF MY CURRENT CONTROL? NEWS FLASH, SHOOTING STAR! I DON'T SLEEP! I CAN KEEP MY EYES OPEN FOR MILLENNIUMS IF I WANTED TO!** "

"Lullabies? Bro, lullabies aren't no bippity bops!" Mabel told him as she crossed her arms. She then looked up at Ryland and gave him a nod.

On command, Ryland pressed play on the playlist, starting it. At that moment, music started beating through Ryland's earbuds within Stan's ears. As it played, one of Bill's eyes began to twitch as he began to process the hard, crunching synthesizers of retro electronic dance beats.

" _ **AHHHHHHHHH!**_   **NOT SYNTHESIZED MUSIC!** " Bill screamed in agony, shaking his head around as he tried to free himself from the earbuds.

"YES, SYNTHESIZED MUSIC! LET HIM FEEL IT! LET HIM BECOME ONE WITH THE BIPPITY BOPS OF OLD 80s SYNTH-POP!" Mabel commanded him as she raised her fists in the air.

"Of course!" Ford realized as he stood beside Mabel. "I had forgotten that the electrical sound signals made by synthesized rhythms could produce virtual electromagnetic pulses at the speed of sound that are damaging enough to stun dream demon neural cycles! Brilliant thinking, Mabel!"

"Uhh...yeah! Of course! That's exactly what I was thinking!" Mabel said, pretending to have understood what Ford had just claimed. Really, the inspiration for the idea was the fact that she had remembered that the synths hurt Bill when they had first fought inside Stan's mind. "That also means we could make it louder, right?"

"An increase in amplitude should make the pulses even more effective, so...sure!" Ford nodded.

"LOUDER, RYLAND!  _LOUDER!_ " Mabel cried out as she threw her fists into the air again.

" **NO, NO! PLEASE DON'T-** " Bill pleaded until Ryland suddenly put the volume at max. " _ **AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!**_ **NOOO! MAKE IT STOP!** "

"That's harsh, man. I actually dig this song," Ryland said as he viewed the song from the playlist.

"Everybody's a critic," Mabel shrugged.

" _ **NO-oooo-OOOO-oooo-O-oo-OOOO-o-OOOO!**_ " Bill's voice suddenly began to phase as if he was suffering a computer virus or a loading error. " **I** _ **C-c-CAN'T**_   **TAKE** _ **AN-nnnn-NY**_   **MORE OF** _ **TH-i-I-i-SS!**_ "

"Holy...I think it's working!" Dipper stated as they all witnessed Bill phasing out.

"Told ya!" Mabel gloated.

" **THIS ISN'T THE** _ **EN-nnnn-NN-n-ND!**_   **YOU'LL SEE ME** _ **AG-A-aaa-AA-aaaa-AIN!**_ " Bill shouted as his voice began to phase out even harder, shaking his head around violently. " _ **HLNV HFMMB WZB! AHHHHHHHH-hhhh-HH-hhhhhhhh-HHHHHHHHHHHH-hhhh-HHHHHHHHHH!**_ "

His screaming then came to a stop and his head fell limp. Eyes closed and mouth hung open, Stan's body was now completely unconscious. The only sound heard at that moment was the faint music coming from Ryland's headphones still within Stan's ears.

"Uhh...did it work?" Ryland asked, as he just stood holding his phone in his hands.

" _GAH!_ " Stan shouted as his eyes came flying back open, startled.

The first thing his eyes caught was Ryland standing right above him with the earbud wires coming directly from his phone. Ryland simply stared back down at him curiously.

"Kid, who are you and why are you blasting my eardrums with that synthesized garbage?" Stan asked him, giving him a curious look back. "Seriously, I wasn't sure anybody else but my great niece could be into that kinda thing. And why does it feel like the blood flow to my arms and legs are-"

He had lifted his head to look at the rest of his surroundings, quickly spotting Soos and Wendy right ahead of him on his legs. A quick turn to the left and right allowed him to catch sight of Dipper, Mabel, and Waddles too, as well as Ford and Derrick, both who stood further to the side.

"Wendy?! Soos?! KIDS?!" he exclaimed in surprise.

"Mr. Pines?!" Wendy and Soos both said in unison.

"GRUNKLE STAN?!" Dipper and Mabel exclaimed, smiles forming on their faces as they looked into his eyes, which no longer glowed yellow.

"IT IS YOU!" Stan exclaimed happily, prompting everyone to leap off of his arms and legs, allowing him to sit up straight before grouping together for one big hug.

"Grunkle Stan, we can't believe it's really you!" Dipper said happily as he hugged Stan.

"Grunkle Stan, I've missed you so much!" Mabel exclaimed tearfully as she hugged him as well.

"I've missed you a lot too, Mr. Pines!" Soos said tearfully as well as he hugged him on his other side.

"We've all missed you, you old nag!" Wendy exclaimed as she hugged him as well.

"I don't even know you, but I want in on this love!" Ryland exclaimed as he suddenly jumped in on the hugs.

"I don't know you either, but I think I'll pass on the love," Derrick said as he just casually stood to the side, placing his hands in his pockets uninterested in the hug fest.

"I've missed all of you kids too!" Stan replied as through the smothering of hugs. "Except those two that I've never seen before in my life. But as much as I appreciate the love, I still have no blood flowing to any of my arms or legs. And if these hugs continue, I may lose the blood flow to my brain too."

"Worth it!" Mabel exclaimed, only tightening her hug.

"Agreed!" Soos exclaimed as well.

"Alright kids, come on now," Ford said as he walked up to the group hug, making a gesture for everyone to back away. They soon did, leaving Stan sitting on the ground with limp arms and legs.

"Woo! This feels weird!" Stan said as he slowly began regaining feeling in his arms and legs again, shaking them. "Any of you ever wake up before with your arm over your head and you can't move it? Imagine that feeling in all of your limbs. That's what this feels like right now." He then looked up at Ford as he offered his hand to him. He grabbed ahold of it and was lifted back to his feet. "Thanks, Sixer."

As Stan stood back on his feet again, he found himself immediately hugged again by Mabel.

"Alright. Now it's time for hugs again," she said as she shut her eyes with her arms wrapped around him.

"Yeah, okay. One more," Stan replied as he placed his arms around her.

On the other hand, Ford found himself suddenly hugged by Dipper.

"It's, uh, good to see you again, Great Uncle Ford," Dipper told him somewhat awkwardly.

Ford looked down at him and smiled as he placed an arm around him, patting him on the back. "My boy, it's good to see you too."

They had their own personal hugs for a moment, however, both of the Stan twins had noticed that the two were dressed up as them from four years ago and felt a need to question them.

"So, is today, like...Dress Up Like Your Grunkle Day or what?" Stan asked as he pulled away from his hug with Mabel.

"No," Mabel denied, although she understood what he was getting at. "Today was Summerween and I thought it'd be cute if Dipper and I dressed up as you two. You know...like the young twins dressing up as the old twins..." She then frowned as she looked down at the ground. "Yeah, it's not one of my best ideas..."

"What? Are you kidding?" Stan questioned with a smile. "That's a great idea! That suit looks great on you! In fact, it makes me question why I never thought of selling Mr. Mystery costumes in the past when I was the owner! You know how much money those could've made?" He then turned his head over to Soos and pointed at him. "Soos, you better be writing this down."

"Way ahead of you, Mr. Pines," Soos said as he already had a notepad and pencil in hand, scribbling away.

"And Dipper, I must say that at sixteen years old, that turtleneck looks better on you than it has on me," Ford told him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Even though, it was never particularly a fashion choice of mine."

"Hah, well, uh, it's kinda got a cut in it," Dipper revealed to him by pulling on the spot Mabel snipped with the scissors earlier. "It was kinda small."

"I see," Ford acknowledged with a nod. "Well, you always get a replacement better suited for you and I'd say you'd still be able to pull it off just fine."

"I'm more of a hoodie guy nowadays," Dipper told him. "But thanks, Great Uncle Ford."

Ford responded with nothing more than a smile. After all those years, the two great uncles were just happy to see their great niece and nephew again, regardless how they dressed.

At that moment, Mabel turned to Ford and quickly looked over at the Snacken on his shoulder. Being the animal lover that she is, it immediately piqued her curiosity with its bright and beautiful colors.

"You know, we have to show respect to the real hero today! This little guy!" she said as she pointed at it.

Ford picked up the baby Snacken in his hands and held it out in front of her. "This 'little guy' is actually a little girl. It's called a Snacken. A sugar-loving Kraken species from the Colorful Creature dimension. We came across a few that happened to leak into our world during our time in the Arctic, and Stan and I came across this friendly little one on the shores of New Jersey."

"Not too long after an encounter with its not-so-friendly mother," Stan added bitterly as he recalled the encounter.

"A Snacken?" Mabel repeated, her interest growing as she got a closer look at it. "Colorful? Sugar-loving?  _I'm in love!_ "

At that moment, the Snacken leaped onto her head, which triggered startled looks from both Stan and Ford for a brief second. However, the Snacken found itself content as it sat on her head. Mabel began giggling as she felt it squish around. It hadn't even been a minute yet and she already knew that she loved it.

"It's so adorable! Grunkle Ford, I love it so much! Can I keep it?" Mabel asked him as the Snacken crawled from her head to her shoulder. " _Pleeeease!_ "

"Well, I mean, I did bring it back to study…but…" Ford said as he rubbed the back of his neck.

"You can still study it!" Mabel told him with a nod as she let the Snacken crawl into her hands. "But like, can I have it after you're done? It's so beautiful! Just look at it!" she said as she raised the Snacken up to his face.

"I suppose that's a compromise I'm willing to accept," Ford told her with a smile.

"YES!" Mabel exclaimed as she spun around, hugging the Snacken in her arms. "And I think I'll call her...Berry! Because her colors make her look like a berry!" The Snacken gave Mabel a cheerful expression as if she approved of the name, wiggling its tentacles around joyfully.

"Alright...that's...a name, I guess…" Dipper said, not entirely satisfied with that name choice, but knew at the same time that it wasn't his pet. Then again, it wasn't Mabel's either ten seconds ago.

"Hold up, kid. Don't you have a pet already?" Stan asked.

"Of course I do!" she said as she played around with Berry before inserting two fingers in her mouth and letting out a whistle. "Hey, Waddles! Look who's back!"

"Wait, no, no! That's not what I mean-!" Stan cried out before suddenly getting tackled by Waddles, who began chewing on his sleeve. "Hey! HEY!"

"He missed you, Grunkle Stan!" Mabel told him happily. "Didn't you miss him?"

"Oh yeah, I sure missed this…" Stan said sarcastically as Waddles continued to gnaw and slobber all of over his coat sleeve.

However, he soon let go and began smelling his face, giving off little oinks as he did. As Stan looked him at him, he raised an eyebrow and simply acknowledged how innocent he looked. Eventually, he couldn't help but just crack a smile at him as he began petting his head.

"Man, I'm gonna hate having to deal with you again," Stan told him. "But fine. I admit I would be lying if I said I didn't miss having you around."

Waddles gave out an oink in response as he just began rubbing up against him, causing Mabel to laugh in amusement as the Snacken also crawled around her body. Even Dipper and Ford couldn't help but give off a few chuckles as they watched. And with the exception of Derrick, everyone else seemed to be amused by the sight as well.

As Stan lay on the ground with Waddles rubbing against him, he turned his head back up at Ford and began to wonder. "So Ford, now that the love has settled down a bit, I've been meaning to ask: what happened? Where's the car? How'd we get here? And why'd I wake up with everyone hugging my arms and legs? Also, what happened to you? Did you sleepwalk your way into a speeding car or something? HA!" he joked real quickly before his expression reverted back to a look of confusion. "Seriously though, I feel like I've missed a lot here. What's going on?"

Despite the questions being directed at Ford, everyone heard them and everyone looked at him. The amused looks had quickly faded into looks of concern and hesitation as if they didn't know how to break things down to Stan.

Suddenly, Ford walked up to Stan and kneeled down in front of him, placing a firm hand on his shoulder while giving him a serious, non-joking look.

"We need to talk," Ford simply told him.

Stan gave him a raised eyebrow, growing slightly concerned. Mabel then stepped forward up to Ford.

"Can we order a pizza, at least?" she asked him.

Ford thought about the question for a few seconds before shrugging. "Eh, why not?"

* * *

Upon returning to the Shack, those who had dressed for Summerween had stripped down to normal T-shirts and otherwise more comfortable wear now that the festivities were essentially over. Now, everyone including Melody, Evan, and Abuelita sat around in the living room as a few half-empty pizza boxes sat on the table.

Everyone sat with a paper plate in hand, looking up at Ford who had, in the last thirty minutes, explained the entire events of the incident regarding Bill's return within the forest, the car crash, and other relevant preceding events to Stan. While he explained, everyone ate slices of pizza, which Mabel also fed to Waddles and attempted to feed to the Snacken before realizing that it didn't particularly enjoy the pizza's sodium count, to which she had substituted it with Gummy Koalas instead.

Throughout his retelling, Stan's expression had shifted and changed in minor ways throughout as if he was processing and breaking down every new revelation carefully. He sat quietly for a majority of the time, not saying much aside from asking an occasional question on the situation.

"So yeah…" Ford finished, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked at Stan. "That's about where we're at right now."

Despite being relatively quiet throughout Ford's explanation, Stan gripped the armrests of the chair tightly as his face began to shift to an angry expression.

"God _dammit_ ," he said frustratedly as he slammed his fists down on the armrests. He then placed his hands on his face, rubbing it for a brief moment as he continued to process things. "So I never killed that freakin' demon then? He's been lurking around up in there all this time?" he asked as he pointed up to his head.

"Yes, but it wasn't until after the encounter with the Nightmare Realm creatures in the Arctic mountain where he actually started to have any real impact on you," Ford clarified for him. "Maybe he's been alive all this time, but he had the power of a tiny, ineffective microorganism. There was little to nothing he could do before. But since his potential has been reinstated, he had become powerful enough to take over control of your mind. Or more so, share it rather than take over."

"So is Bill still inside Stan's mind then?" Dipper asked as he put his cleaned paper plate to the side. "Or did Mabel's terrible music taste drive him off?"

"Hey, you can call it what you want, but I don't recall your 'BABBA's Greatest Hits' playlist ever saving the day before," Mabel sputtered as she chewed on a pizza slice.

"Well, based on the eyes, we know that at the very least that he's not in control of your uncle now," Ford said as he stepped toward the stone wall of the living room. To everyone's surprise, he pressed a random rock on the wall like a button, which triggered some sort of secret compartment to extrude from the wall.

"Woah, woah! I never knew about that!" Stan pointed out as he saw the compartment.

"Alright, how many other secret compartments does this place even have that we haven't discovered?" Melody asked, glancing over at Ford.

"Considering that I had this place constructed and designed for my needs...let's just say a lot and they're all way less obvious than this," Ford answered as he pulled out a gold-colored device from the compartment before closing it.

The device looked almost like a handheld metal detector of some sort, except it had a trigger similar to one of a shotgun. He briefly presented it to everyone in the room in his hand for a quick moment.

"I once developed this device out of paranoia of Bill lurking within my own mind. A quick scan of the head will detect any anomalous activity within the mind," Ford explained as he held the device up to Stan's head, pulling the trigger, which gave off a blinking yellow light.

"What qualifies as anomalous activity?" Dipper asked.

"Essentially, if it detects anything paranormal or weird, the light will turn red," Ford explained. "However, it does detect lesser abnormalities such as brain diseases or tumors, to which it'll simply turn yellow without blinking. Otherwise, if everything is completely normal, then it'll just turn green."

There was a beeping noise that soon emerged from the device as Ford hovered it over Stan's head. The blinking yellow light now showed a constant red light.

"Unfortunately, it looks as though that's not the case," Ford said with a frown as he looked at the red light.

"Oh no…" Mabel said, placing her hands over her mouth in horror of the revelation. She admittedly didn't expect the music to have completely defeated Bill, but she had still remained hopeful up to that point.

"Damn, Mr. Pines..." Wendy said sympathetically.

"So, Bill's still sharing a mind with Stan?" Soos asked in slight horror.

"It appears so," Ford said with a sigh as he turned off the device. Stan looked down with a mixed look of anger and distress of the situation.

"But, it's fine, right? Now that you guys are here?" Dipper asked, trying to maintain a hopeful. "Being back at the Shack with access to your lab and everything, you can work on effectively clearing Bill from Stan's mind?"

Stan smiled. "Yeah, the kid's right, Sixer. Now that we're home, we can clear this sucker from my head once and for all, can't we? You've got to have the tools for it."

"Well, we  _can_  certainly get to work…" Ford began, rubbing the back of his head. "...on finding out how to get rid of Bill effectively."

"You mean...you  _don't_  know to get rid of Bill?" Mabel asked.

Ford sighed. "Look, the way Bill is currently within Stan's mind is different than a normal possession of his, as said before. He's involuntarily sharing a mind with Stan, and he's trapped inside. My normal tactics against him will be completely ineffective, as they rely on his dream demon form. But the way it is right now, Bill hasn't retained a dream demon form again. His new form is within Stan," Ford explained to everyone.

"And that statue in the woods is his true form…" Dipper realized aloud. "It's the only other piece that's left of him. His other half. Now he's trying to get back to it and become whole again."

"Precisely," Ford nodded.

"Well, why don't we just play Mabel's synth-y music all the time around Stan to keep...Bill...from coming back out? Keep him suppressed?" Ryland suggested as he stepped into the middle of the group.

"Now  _that's_  an idea I can get down with!" Mabel said, pointing over at Ryland. "Not that I don't already listen to my music whenever I get the chance..."

"It might be a good idea in theory, but dream demons like Bill are also highly adaptive," he explained. "He may lack his true form, but he still has a presence within Stan's mindscape. If we play synth music constantly, he'll learn to get used to it. The synths can never destroy him, but it distorts and weakens him. We are removing weakness by overexposing him to it. And so for now, it's only a good idea to use such weakness to our advantage sparingly. Besides, based on what he's already been received today, it'll take some time for him to completely come back from this."

"Also, I'd rather not have my ears suffocated by the worst genre the 80's ever offered," Stan said, covering his ear reflexively at the mere thought of 24/7 synthpop.

"Mr. Pines, can ears even be suffocated?" Soos asked, raising his hand.

"If not, she'll find a way," Stan replied, narrowing his eyes at Mabel as he kept his ears covered.

"Anyway, I suppose the next objective will be finding another way to destroy Bill from Stan's mind…" Ford said as he looked over at Stan. "I have a feeling as Dipper brought up, there must be a strong correlation between him and statue in the woods. We'll definitely have to look back into it. And soon. If we're going by what Bill had implied, then all it takes is one handshake from any one individual to reawaken his madness."

"So from all I've learned from this, you're saying that thing has sat out in the middle of the woods for all these years since you guys fought him and there hasn't been one person; not one kid; not one  _idiot_ , that has come out and shook that thing's hand?" Derrick asked, finally involving himself in the discussion.

"The kids kinda got a point," Stan agreed as he turned to Ford. "What if Bill's bluffing about this handshake thing?"

"Well, again, that's only if we go off what Bill implied. And while he seemed determined to get one of us to do it, we have to learn not to trust Bill's word all the time," Ford replied. "That isn't to say go and shake the hand and call his bluff, but let's not jump to conclusions on what does what based on the words of someone who has done this family wrong several times."

"Well, whatever happens, we're just glad to finally have our two Grunkles back!" Mabel said as she walked up behind Stan and Ford and wrapped an arm around both of their necks, pulling them in close.

"Yeah, it's good for all of us to finally be together again," Dipper nodded with a smile.

"It absolutely does," Ford nodded, hugging Mabel back.

"Already feels just like old times," Stan agreed as he looked back and forth between the two. "Except you both aren't the kids I remember you two being. All grown up now. Hell, I still remember the time I gave Dipper the ol' talk about the birds and the bees."

"Uhh...what?" Dipper asked, not recalling this incident.

"Just be thankful that you had your innocence for as long as you did," Mabel told him quietly as she stared forward with a scarred look in her eyes as she recalled the event that he couldn't.

"Anyway, I think we're ready to turn in for the night," Stan said as he rose from his chair and yawned.

"Agreed," Ford nodded. "Come morning, we have a lot of work to do."

"But where are you two gonna sleep?" Mabel asked.

"They can sleep in the room with me and Melody! They can have the bed and we'll take the floor!" Soos suggested as he immediately stood up from the floor.

"Uh...Soos, while I'd be happy to provide for the Pines brothers, we didn't talk this decision over…" Melody politely and calmly brought up despite Soos's sudden and absurd idea she didn't even agree to.

"It's alright, Soos," Stan dismissed with a simple hand wave as he and Ford walked over to the door leading to the gift shop. "The bro and I will just hang out in the basement."

The two proceeded to walk into the gift shop from the living room, to which everyone began to follow them. Ryland, however, stood behind everyone else processing the final detail mentioned.

"Wait a second. We have a basement?" Ryland asked, shocked by this revelation happening now after being an employee for several months.

"Yes, I've had it closed off and locked down since Stan and I left on our voyage. I wanted to have all my old projects and experiments kept down there for safekeeping. Having been four years, I'm sure it'll be in desperate need of a clean-up and dust-off," Ford said as he walked up to the vending machine.

"Oh great. Just what I wanted to come home to. Cleaning," Stan groaned sarcastically with an eye roll.

"Anyway, there shouldn't be much issue hearing the machinery as we reactivate everything again," Ford told everyone while ignoring Stan's sarcasm. "With us being underground and mostly out of the way, it should also offer the least amount of trouble for everybody."

"It's not like you two are much trouble any other way," Mabel told them as she walked over toward the two and gave them yet another hug.

"What's with you and the hugs, kid? That's like the twentieth one today." Stan asked with a light chuckle, but also getting a tad tired of them.

"It's been four years. Can't a girl catch up on her need for family hugging?" Mabel asked as she only tightened her hug. "I've missed you two."

Stan smiled as he placed a gentle hand on her back, patting it. "We've missed you too, pumpkin. But, we gotta get some sleep now. It's good to be back though."

Mabel didn't want to, but she let go of her hug with the two and backed up, acknowledging her Grunkles' need for rest. "It's good to  _have_ you back."

The brothers smiled as Ford pressed a button on the side of Meridian, which sent a signal triggering the vending machine door to open; one of the few other things he still managed to be able to do with it in its offline mode aside from toast-making. The vending machine door flew open with a puff of smoke, unveiling the secret doorway leading into the lab.

Ryland stared in awe at the secret doorway as it was revealed to him for the first time. "Alright, that's pretty cool."

The two brothers walked through the doorway, with Stan sticking back behind Ford waving goodnight to everyone before walking down the stairs.

Ford prepared Meridian so he could close the vending machine again. "Good night, everyone."

"Wait!" Dipper quickly spoke up before Ford closed the machine. He then proceeded to take out his blue journal, holding it out in front of Ford to see. "Great Uncle Ford, I don't know if it's too soon, but I was hoping that maybe you could read through the progress I've made on my journal? I've been working hard on it and cataloging the things we've come across since summer began. I know you said you wanted to see it when you got the chance."

Ford took his hand away from his watch and smiled warmly as he crouched down in front of Dipper, placing his hand on his shoulder. "I did say that. And I do want to see it. But understand, Dipper, that at this point in time, with such a vital threat as Bill coming back into our lives and plaguing the mind of your uncle, I need to devote most, if not, all of my focus on defeating him once and for all. I know you've been working hard and I know you wish to show me your progress. And I most certainly will eventually. But for now, I ask that you just hold onto that journal."

"Oh, alright," Dipper accepted understandingly, though still feeling a bit dejected. "I figured it was too soon."

"It was a fine and honest question to ask," Ford told him with a smile. "And trust me. There are exciting discoveries I've made myself over the past four years and other things that I'm thrilled to share with you and Mabel. It's just that...well, this situation with your uncle takes priority first. But I promise you, my boy. When Bill has been handled and all is well, the rest of the summer is ours. Adventures and other exhilarating projects all around the Falls. Nothing like we've ever done before. That I can promise you, Dipper. I know you've waited four years for this, but all I ask is for a little more time to sort out the current stakes in place."

Dipper smiled, thrilled by the ideas that Ford had put in place for the inevitable future of the summer. "Okay. No worries. I can't wait, but I will."

"And so will I," Ford nodded in agreement as he stood back up and walked back through the vendor doorway. "Keep that journal updated, boy. Don't miss a thing."

He then proceeded to press the button on Meridian again, which triggered the vending machine to close right behind him as he began making his way down the stairs. Everyone else was left outside, staring at the closed vendor in awe.

"Wow," Soos said as he just stared on at the vendor.

"You can say that again," Mabel replied.

"Wow," Soos repeated.

"I go vacuum the party now," Abuelita suddenly spoke out, separating herself from the group and making her way back into the living room while everyone else continued to stare at the vendor.

* * *

At the bottom of the stairway, Stan stood in front of a large metal door. The door was very shiny but also slightly rusted near the seam between the cobweb-covered wooden planks stationed around the walls. In the middle of the door, there was a large keypad. Stan stared at it while tapping his foot impatiently as he heard his brother's footsteps from the stairs.

"It ain't a lot of stairs, Poindexter. How does it take ya so long to walk down them?" Stan said as he turned around to see Ford finally reach the bottom.

"To be frank, Stanley, I'm quite tired of walking up and down stairs. Especially when it raiding temples and climbing mountains tend to come with similar jobs," Ford admitted.

"Ya know, I do look forward to the day you finally grow old and tired enough to where you're just about as lazy as I am," Stan said as he crossed his arms. "Might finally take some stress of that brain of yours."

"Please. Growing irritated with the idea of climbing and descending terrain doesn't put me anywhere near the level of the indolence you attain," Ford said as he approached the metal door. "Anyway, let's see what we have here…"

"What we have here is the giant metal door that  _you_ built in front of the elevator and that only  _you_ know how to open because  _you_ insisted it would be best designed exclusively to your hand," Stan said in a passive-aggressive tone.

"My hand…" Ford restated from Stan, eyes soon bulging as he came to a realization. "Ah! I remember now."

After studying the keypad for a brief minute, he simply placed his hand on the side of it and popped it open. Underneath it, there was an interface panel with a grid layout. Ford pressed his hand against it, to which there was soon a green light that scanned the entire surface of his six-fingered hand. Soon enough, the scanning stopped and there was a small beep. At that moment, the entire keypad and panel retracted itself, and the metal door slowly began to open; the heaviness and weight shaking up the entire underground as it did.

"Oh good. Nice to know that if we ever go on another trip where we need to put this up and you can't come back, all I gotta do is slice off your hand to get this thing open again," Stan said as he examined how Ford opened the door.

"I thought I had made this door more complicated…" Ford said as he tried to remember his initial setup of the metal door four years ago. He then pressed the panel for the elevator itself as it was unveiled. "It might've been one of the other ones."

"Other ones?" Stan asked, unaware of what he meant.

"We'll worry about those later," Ford brushed off as he placed his hand on Stan's back, leading him into the elevator itself as the doors to it opened.

"So let's worry about what's happening now, then," Stan stated as the elevator doors closed. "What do I do now? I got a living demon from a literal nightmare dimension in my head who can supposedly take control of me whenever he wants. How the hell am I supposed to...I don't know...not have that happen?"

"Well, luckily I still have plenty of other precautionary devices made from my own paranoias of Bill," Ford told him as he recalled his previous inventions. "One of them includes a night-guard device that stabilizes your mind in your sleep. It should make it more challenging for Bill to take over while you sleep, which I can guarantee is the most likely time he'll attempt to strike. However, that's all it really does. It makes it challenging for him, but not impossible. Lessens the chance of another supposed sleepwalking incident like back in the Cheyenne, but doesn't completely eliminate it. You're still vulnerable. Still, it's better than nothing. I'll fish around for it and hand it to you to put on before bed."

Stan took a brief moment to process everything Ford had just said while thinking about other possibilities. "And what about when I'm awake? Like back when I was driving you back here to the Falls. I never fell asleep, Stanford. That thing took over while I was driving you. The last thing I remember was being out during the sunset, and the next thing I know, I'm being pinned to the ground." He turned to Ford and looked him in the eye, giving him a grave look of concern. "If that thing can take over at any moment when I'm awake...maybe when I'm with the kids, or with Soos, or maybe even on this elevator with you...what next?"

Ford thought for a moment, trying his hardest to look for the best response he could give Stan. He wanted to give him a good answer. One that he knew he'd like. But he was struggling to think of one that would satisfy him. And despite how much he wished he had the answer he wanted, he didn't.

"I don't know," Ford told him bluntly. "I really don't. I'm sorry, Stan."

Stan stared back at Ford for a minute without reaction. He looked disappointed, but his facial expression didn't change. But one could tell by the look in his eyes that he was disappointed.

Disappointment. That, along with fear and anger.

"But I do know one thing…" Ford continued, grabbing Stan's attention again. "I will not rest until that demon's dead. There is not another project I'll put ahead of your well-being, Stanley. You're my brother. I've spent the last four years of my life adventuring with you around the world. I've had to save your life several times, but in the end, all of that doesn't compare to the one time you saved mine." Stan's eyes widened a bit with this statement. "While I may not have been at the time, I am forever grateful that you brought me home, Stanley. And now, it's my turn to bring you home. That I owe you."

Stan gave a light chuckle at this. "You owe me nothing, Sixer. You've already given me my childhood dreams: Sailing around the world, finding treasures, getting babes. There ain't anything more repayment that I need from you."

Ford wasn't sure how to feel about this response. He could detect the humbleness in Stan's tone, but at the same time, it sounded as though Stan was somewhat saying he didn't want help. He wasn't sure which way he should interpret the statement in its entirety, but either way, he was still going to help him.

"Well, this may not be a repayment you need, but it's one I do," Ford told him, placing a firm hand on his shoulder. "And I won't rest until it's done."

Stan looked back over at him and stared at him for a brief second. Then he smiled gratefully at Ford, to which he smiled back.

At that moment, the elevator finally stopped. The doors opened to the third level. At first glance into the dark, they saw that all the electronics and machines were completely off. There was not a single light or noise coming from anything. And lastly, it was very warm. With all the power disabled to the floor, all the interior underground heat had been building up for several years and created a very muggy feeling.

Ford took a few steps inside before turning left. Despite the intense darkness, he knew and remembered the lab like the back of his hand. He found a large lever and pulled it up.

There was a large flashing noise as every single ceiling light lit up. Then the sounds of about a hundred different types of machinery beginning to turn on sounded and echoed throughout the room. The room was still warm, but Ford felt heavy chills as he watched his lab light up and begin to function again. He smiled proudly as he remembered the sight and how it looked almost exactly as it did before they left, except a lot dustier.

He then turned to his brother, who still stood in the elevator, watching everything light up and function again.

"Good to be back, Stanley?"

Stan looked back at him and smiled readily.

"Good to be back indeed."

* * *

_June 17th, 2016_

_Today was the second Summerween that Mabel and I had ever celebrated in Gravity Falls. And it was...eventful, to say the least._ _There's a lot to go over, but let me get to the good news first:_

_Grunkle Stan and Great Uncle Ford have finally returned!_

_This was a Summerween surprise I didn't see coming. When Summer first began, they had told us it would be awhile before they returned. Despite this, Mabel and I were growing worried that we hadn't heard anything from them since they said that. However, to see them finally turn up again and be reunited with them after so long is just incredible._

_Unfortunately, they're not the only ones who returned today. It turns out that our old enemy, Bill Cipher, is actually still inside Stan's mind and has been all this time since we defeated him last. Now, he has the ability to take over Stan's mind and body when he pleases._

_I don't know what to say, honestly. Bill was our greatest threat during our last stay in Gravity Falls and he's tried to kill us several times. I thought we were rid of him when we used the memory eraser on Stan, but knowing that he survived that and he's come back at the beginning of Summer? What could be worse?_

_Luckily, Great Uncle Ford's gonna look into a way to get rid of him again. Hopefully, he figures it out soon. I'd love to be done with Bill once and for all so we don't ever have to worry about him tormenting us again. And I'd like to spend my nights knowing that I'm not gonna see Stan creep up on me and Mabel with a knife or something in our sleep._

_In the end, I guess, I'm just glad that our two great uncles are finally home. Once this whole Bill thing blows over, it'll be nice to spend some proper time with them and go on adventures together just like old times. I'm still excited to show Great Uncle Ford the rest of this journal and everything we've come across so far. And I'm sure Mabel's excited to binge-watch all the newest Duck-tective episodes and movies with Stan and her new octopus/Kraken-thing._

_Oh yeah, Mabel got a new pet (that she unoriginally named Berry). According to Ford, it's a called 'Snacken'. Not sure how to feel about it. On one hand, it did save the day by jumping on top of Stan's head while Bill was in control. On the other hand, from experience with Waddles alone, Mabel + pets can lead to a variety of different possibilities. Not all of them the best. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens._

_Looking forward to seeing Grunkle Stan and Ford again in the morning. I know they need to focus on destroying Bill, but there's so much we still need to catch up on. It's been four years!_

_And according to Mabel, it was apparently their birthday a few days ago? I'm not sure. She was quick about that and sprinted off to make copies of some flier before I had a chance to ask. She's still making copies as I write this. It's 1 AM._

_Guess I'll just try to sleep it off._

* * *

 

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	27. Many Happy Returns: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Season 1B Begin] Mabel throws a surprise party to celebrate Stan and Ford’s return to Gravity Falls. However, Dipper and Mabel’s plans change as they put their personal pursuits at the party ahead of spending time with their Grunkles.

When spending the last four years of his life sleeping on a boat, Stan had gotten used to sleeping on wobbling wooden decks, even conquering the feelings of seasickness after the first few weeks of their voyage. After all this time, perhaps the one thing he didn't know he missed most was the comfort of a normal bed.

No wobbling or swaying. No uncomfortable feeling of laying directly on top of a wooden deck. No imminent feelings of seasickness.

Just a normal, comfy bed that he could let it himself sink into and fall asleep in within seconds. If there's anything he could've missed more than Dipper and Mabel again, it was that.

Hell, he would've admitted it. He missed sleeping in a good bed just a tiny bit more than he missed the kids. But he'd wonder if anyone could really blame him after all he's been through. He's earned this rest, has he not?

_CRASH!_

That ended it though. This loud noise of metal thrashing immediately drew Stan awake with a jolt. He glanced around frantically as he blankly wondered what was happening. He quickly realized his vision wasn't exactly suitable at that moment and reached over for his glasses to the side. He placed them on and quickly looked around yet again.

_RRRRRRRRR!_

Stan looked in the direction of the whirring noise and caught sight of his own brother working a power saw of some sort at a desk. He wore a welding mask as sparks and little chips flew from what he was sawing.

Curiosity over Ford's doings were the last thing that Stan felt at that moment, however. He narrowed his eyes at his brother.

"FORD!" he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. " _FORD!_ "

As the power saw kept running, Ford turned his head in Stan's direction. He smiled and waved a hand up before promptly shutting off the saw. "Morning, Stanley!"

"What the hell are you doing up already?" Stan asked as he sat in bed. "And why are you causing such a ruckus?"

"What do you mean? I've been up for hours and you seemed to sleep just fine through my business," Ford told him.

"Oh...But why?" Stan asked. "Why so early?"

"I'm cleaning up the lab," Ford said as turned back to the table and brushed off the top of the desk. "Reorganizing and tidying up everything. Figured it needed to get done and I had decided I wasn't very tired, so I got up early and got to work. Perhaps you might not agree with my timing, but at least I've done most of the work for us."

"Well, in the end, it's more your lab than mine," Stan claimed as he scratched his back. "But hey, who am I to complain about doing less work?"

"That's one way to look at it," Ford said as he took his visor off and placed it down on the desk, walking over to him. "Anywho, how'd you sleep?"

"Great actually, until you woke me up with your ear-grating power saw," Stan said as he placed his legs over the side of the bed and on the ground as he sat.

"Good to hear…" Ford said as he gave Stan a hesitant look. "Did you see  _him_  at all?"

"Yeah, I did actually," Stan nodded.

"What?!" Ford asked, eyes bulging with fear. "Really?!"

"Yeah and he was annoying," Stan claimed as he recalled his dream. "Even in my dreams, Shermie still beats me at poker. I even cheated and he still beat me! Gah, freakin' asshole of a brother."

Ford frowned and stared at Stan annoyedly. He had no idea where Stan got Shermie's name as the person claimed as 'him', given the current circumstances. Stan noticed Ford's look and raised an eyebrow.

"What?" Stan asked.

Ford quickly gave him a slap across the face with one of his gloves, which gave Stan a slight sting. "Not Sherman, you knucklehead!  _Bill!_  Did you see Bill?"

"Geez, you coulda just clarified," Stan claimed as he rubbed the side of his face. "No, I didn't. Thankfully too, because he's the one thing more annoying than Shermie's poker skills."

"Well, good. Perhaps, the  _Stabrainilizer_  was effective in keeping Bill locked down last night," Ford claimed as he looked on at Stan.

"The Stabra _-who?_ " Stan asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion of what Ford meant.

"On your head, Stanley…" Ford pointed out to him on his head. "Remember? The device to keep your mind stabilized while you sleep? Don't tell me Bill's short-term memory effects are still in play here…"

Stan looked up and finally noticed the device, which he couldn't believe took him this long to spot. It was a metal helmet of some sort with several large protruding wires linked up to a machine located right behind him. The machine displayed a monitor that seemed to show brain activity or brain waves. It was at that moment that Stan had woken up enough to actually recall this helmet.

"No, no, I remember now," Stan assured as he placed his hands on the helmet and took it off, placing it to the side. "Cut me some slack, Poindexter. I just woke up here. Haven't exactly recovered all of my...what do you call 'em? Mental processes? Whatever. I just ain't thinking straight yet. You gotta give a man like me about an hour after waking up."

"An hour, Stanley?" Ford asked narrowing his eyes slightly in annoyance of his brother's lazy awakening.

"What? I haven't even eaten breakfast yet!" Stan defended once he caught the look in Ford's eyes.

"Neither have I and you don't see me complaining," Ford told him.

"Well, growing up, I remember being told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Doesn't it help nerds like you get your brains working faster or something?" Stan questioned as he stood up from the bed.

"I've been through enough dimensions to disprove that claim with scientific means. Besides, we have plenty of work that we need to…" Ford claimed as he began walking away.

"Oh, get the hell out of here with your dimension talk," Stan spoke annoyedly as he grabbed a hold of his brother's arm and began leading him toward the elevator. "Just get up there and make a damn omelette. Then we can worry about this 'work.'"

Ford sighed reluctantly as Stan pressed the elevator button. "Fine. I suppose we do have the whole day anyway to work on finding a way to defeat Bill. And it probably would be wise to not risk letting hunger get in the way."

"Now you're talking," Stan said, patting his brother on the back as the elevator door opened and the two walked inside. "It's not like we've made plans or anything. Catching an early morning meal ain't gonna mess with us, is it?."

"I suppose not," Ford said as the elevator doors promptly closed.

* * *

"Honestly though, Stanley, I haven't made omelettes in over thirty years. Not sure it would be the safest idea if I made them."

"No worries. I can do them. Might have some of my hair in it, but…"

"Actually, now that I think about it, I think I'd prefer taking the risk and prepare them myself."

"If you say so."

It was at that moment that the vending machine promptly flew open, letting out a small puff of smoke as it always did. The two brothers proceeded to take a few steps out from the secret room, to which they promptly froze upon suddenly getting showered with handfuls of confetti.

" _SURPRISE!_ "

As the two brothers looked around, they quickly caught sight of the faces of Dipper, Mabel, Soos, Melody, Wendy, Ryland, and Abuelita, all smiling and stood surrounding them at the vendor. Right in front of them, Abuelita also held out a cake inside a box within her hands, with two candles in the center. As the confetti that they threw settled, the two smiled but remained slightly confused about what was happening, considering they had already done their reuniting the night before.

"What is this?" Ford asked with a light chuckle.

"We celebrating mornings now?" Stan asked as he looked on at the cake.

Mabel quickly ran up to them and placed an arm around each of them, giving them a tight hug. "It's a welcome home cake for the best grunkles in the world!"

"They actually didn't have a welcome home cake on ready at the bakery so we just got a birthday cake instead," Dipper clarified, while awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck.

"But I mean, we found out that it was also your birthday recently, so I guess it still sorta applies," Mabel added as she led the two closer to the cake.

The two brothers read the cake and their smiles immediately disappeared once they saw what was written on it.

"' _Happy Birthday Spoon and Fork?'_ " Stan read aloud in confusion.

"Uh, yeah. The Swedish baker may have gotten the names wrong," Soos said with an awkward chuckle as he fiddled his fingers around.

"Alright, I kinda get the mistake with Ford's name, but in what dimension does Stan sound like Spoon?" Stan asked.

"Actually, you'd be surprised-" Ford began.

"Don't start with me, smartass," Stan cut short, not wanting to hear more of Ford's dimensional talk.

"Who cares what's on the cake? It's all about the thought that counts, right?" Mabel asked as she stood beside it. "Plus, it's chocolate! Who doesn't like chocolate?"

"It's chocolate?" Ryland questioned in shock as no one told him this information before. "What're we waiting for then? Let's blow out some candles and eat some cake!"

"Make a wish, you two!" Wendy said as she held a camera out and aimed it at the two.

Stan and Ford then proceeded to smile again. They looked at one another before looking back at the candles. Their birthday was a few days ago, and it was by far one of the worst ones they had ever spent. However, to be properly making up for that day and celebrating it days later surrounded by true family and friends was an amazing feeling.

They took in deep breaths before blowing out the two candles, just as Wendy snapped a picture. Everyone around them promptly gave out light cheers and claps.

"So what'd you two wish for?" Dipper asked.

Stan let out a hearty chuckle as he rubbed the top of Dipper's head, pushing the top of his hat in. "What else is there to ask for?"

"Yeah. We've waited nearly four long years for this moment," Ford claimed as he looked around gratefully. "I'm just thrilled that it's finally here."

"Awww," Mabel said as he folded her hands together.

"We all are," Dipper claimed with a smile.

"Speaking of waiting for a moment, I have an announcement to make," Soos chimed in with a slightly nervous look. "It's something that we've been keeping secret for some time now, but I wanted to wait until Dipper, Mabel, and the Stan bros were all here in Gravity Falls so we could tell everyone at once."

"We?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes," Melody said as she happily walked up beside Soos and placed an arm around him. "We."

"Melody and I are getting married, dudes!" Soos announced excitedly, just as Melody held her hand up to showcase the ring on her finger.

" _WHAT?!_ " Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, Ryland, and even Stan exclaimed in shock all at once.

"OH MY  _GOOOOOOOD!_ " Mabel shrieked with a smile that she didn't think could get any wider.

"Yep. I proposed last summer and she said yes!" Soos added, blushing slightly.

"DUDE! That's awesome!" Dipper exclaimed happily for his friend. "Congratulations! Both of you!"

"Yeah! Congrats, you two!" Wendy also exclaimed excitedly.

"Congrats!" Ryland also nodded.

"Who woulda thought?" Stan claimed in slight disbelief, but also with a proud smile.

"And because we've had this planned for awhile now, we had already planned the ceremony for the end of July," Melody added as she looked up at Soos.

"It's all going down next month, dudes!" Soos exclaimed happily.

"A wedding?! NEXT MONTH?! OH MY GOD!" Mabel exclaimed as she rocked back and forth within the stool at the counter before promptly falling backward in the stool onto the floor.

"Oh boy. Here she goes," Dipper claimed as he looked on at Mabel in preparation.

"What's her deal?" Stan asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Mabel and I haven't ever been to a wedding before," Dipper revealed.

" _Ehem!_  Waddles and Gompers!" Mabel corrected as she shot back up from the floor.

" _Ehem!_  A  _real_  wedding!" Dipper counter-corrected. "Anyways, it's been, like, a lifelong dream of hers to go to one and even help plan one out at some point."

"Can you blame me?" Mabel asked as she placed her stool back up and sat back down. "As someone who's all about love and bringing people together, this is a moment that's long overdue."

"Well, as someone who has been married twi...I mean, once...and dragged into several family weddings as a child, I can say there's nothing to be excited about," Stan said grumpily as he folded his arms.

"Stanley!" Ford exclaimed as he nudged him in the arm, trying to prompt him not to be rude.

"Hey, don't act like you don't know it either!" Stan defended as he pointed at Ford. "Weddings are just overblown, uncomfortable family gatherings that you're dragged into just for being related to someone you dislike. You're forced to act happy and excited for the couple and are expected to kiss ass to someone you may not even respect just because it's 'their big day'. Honestly, to me, funerals have always been less depressing in comparison." He then proceeded to look up at Soos and Melody, who both stood somewhat awkwardly as he ranted. "No offense, you two. I'm happy for the both of you, but those are just my two cents on weddings."

"No, I one-hundred-percent understand, Mr. Pines," Melody spoke up. "I've been dragged into plenty of family weddings myself and my family aren't particularly the most pleasant people to be around during parties and large events. So I can totally understand how miserable weddings can be."

"But we promise you, Mr. Pines. You can put behind every other wedding experience you've had before because Melody and I are gonna get this one  _r-r-right_ ," Soos assured Stan as he wrapped his arm around Melody's neck.

"Not encouraging. But hopeful," Stan shrugged.

"Ah, for Pete's sake, Stan. Show some respect, won't ya?" Ford said as he walked up to Soos and Melody. He proceeded to then shake both of their hands, one by one. "Congratulations to the both of you. Marriage is a very defining moment in the lives of a happy couple and you two should be very fortunate for finding a bond worth sealing for a lifetime in one another."

"Thanks, Mr. Pines Number Two," Soos said gratefully.

"Uh...just call me Ford, son," Ford said as he placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Heh, okay," Soos said with a thumbs up before turning toward everyone else. "But seriously guys. Thank you all. It's been a struggle holding onto this secret for so long. But I'm happy to finally let you know that I'm bringing Melody into the Ramirez family."

" _Aye_ , Soos. I'm so proud of you for taking such a big step as a man," Abuelita said as she placed her hand on Soos's back before looking over at Melody. "Melody is a wonderful girl and I couldn't be happier for the both of you."

"Thanks, Abuelita," Soos said as he hugged her.

"Yeah, thank you so much," Melody said as Abuelita walked over to her. "I know you hold Soos close, and I'm happy to have your blessing."

"Of course,  _querido_ ," Abuelita said with a warm smile as she placed her hands among one of hers. "Just know that if you ever leave him like his father did,  _yo personalmente te asesinaré_."

Abuelita proceeded to walk away from her cheerfully and casually, leaving Melody with a stunned expression on her face. Soos then wrapped his arm back around her with a smile.

"Gosh, Abuelita is just the sweetest, isn't she?" Soos asked happily, completely unaware of the threat Abuelita had made to her.

"Yeah...she's certainly something…" Melody chuckled nervously.

"Man, what a great morning this has been!" Mabel exclaimed as she ran up beside her great uncles, who had already begun digging into the chocolate cake. "Spending the morning celebrating the return and birthday of our wonderful Grunkles! Finding out that our best friend Soos is getting married! Chocolate cake!"

"Yes, this has certainly been a very eventful morning," Ford said as he ate a forkful of cake. "And a great celebration at that too! Thank you all for putting this together!"

"Cake's a little dry, but yeah. This has been pretty great," Stan nodded.

"Well, things are only gonna get greater!" Mabel said excitedly as she stood in front of them with a paper in hand and held it out in front of them. "Because the day's just getting started! The pre-party to the  _real_  party!"

"What's this?" Stan asked as he read the paper, which appeared to actually be a flier for what looked like a party. "A party?"

"That's right! I spent all night planning and putting together a party in the floor room!" Mabel revealed. "A party celebrating you two! The return of Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford! And the whole town's invited!"

" _Another_  party, Mabel?" Dipper asked, unsure about this idea. "We just had one for Summerween yesterday…"

"Yeah, dude. As much as I like partying, I ain't too sure having another one here at the Shack so soon is such a good idea…" Soos also said hesitantly.

"Also, didn't last night's party get cut short?" Ryland asked as he put his own plate of cake down. "Won't that make people a little unsure about coming back the very next day?"

"To be fair, it's not like anyone in this town has anything better to do with their lives anyway," Wendy claimed.

"Pretty much!" Mabel agreed. "Besides, this isn't a Summerween party. There are no costumes or anything spooky. It's just a normal party in the floor room! It's nothing too crazy," She proceeded to walk back up to Stan and Ford and place her hands on their backs. "I just wanted to do something special for Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford now that they're home."

"While that indeed sounds very special…" Ford began, giving her an unsure look. "...is there any chance we could potentially reschedule for some time later in the future?"

"What? Why?" Mabel asked.

"Well, it's just that Stan and I already have important business dealing with the whole Bill situation," Ford explained. "And with a party on such short notice, it just feels a little inopportune for us. You know?"

"Oh…" Mabel said, feeling slightly dejected. "I understand. Duh. I should've known how much more important Bill was."

"Oh, Mabel, I didn't mean it like…" Ford tried to correct himself.

"No, it's not that," Mabel cut off. "It's just that I already spent the night printing fliers and passing them out all over town. I even went through about four gallons of Mabel Juice just to stay awake," she said as she held up a glass of Mabel Juice in her hand and promptly splashed it across her face, drenching herself. "But it's no problem. I guess I can just tell off anybody who does show up."

"Well...I mean…" Ford said, trying to think of a way to respond.

"Hold up, Sixer," Stan whispered, putting a hand on Ford's shoulder and grabbing his attention. "We can't make her cancel this thing. She put in a lot of work just for us!"

"Yes, Stan, I know," Ford responded quietly with a nod. "But...Bill…"

"Look, I understand the stakes of sharing a mind and body with a psychopathic demon who could take over any second," Stan told him. "But, we've waited so long to see the kids and spend time with them again. Are we seriously gonna blow off a party made specifically for us to spend time with them?"

"I...I don't even know anymore…" Ford said, placing a hand on his face.

"It's just one day, bro," Stan reminded him. "One day just to celebrate coming home. After today, then for however long it takes, we can work on this whole Bill thing. But I'm sure spending one day having a good time isn't gonna do the whole mission much harm."

Ford looked back at Mabel, who was looking on at the flier she had made. She then sighed and looked down dejectedly, letting her arm hang out with the paper in hand. Realizing how much effort she had gone through to set something up all in one night, Ford knew he couldn't say no. This was all made and done out of her own passion and will. And he wasn't gonna force her to let it all go to waste. Especially when it was all done for them.

"On second thought, Mabel…" Ford began as he turned to her. "...I think a little partying beforehand might help us get into the right mindset to really go up against Bill."

"Really?" Mabel asked as her frown began to transform into a smile again

"Really."

Mabel jumped from her seat over to Ford and hugged him tightly. "Thank you, Grunkle Ford!" She then linked Stan into her hug. "And I promise, this party is all about the both of you! Dipper and I won't leave either of your sides tonight!"

"I mean, she never talked any of this out with me…" Dipper said as he walked over to the three while rubbing the back of his head. "...but that's true enough, I guess."

"Well, I'd sure hope so," Stan said as he put an arm around both of their necks. "We ain't killing a day of hard work to be ignored by our own niece and nephew, are we?"

"Of course not!" Mabel shook her head.

"No!" Dipper shook his head too.

"Grunkle Stan, we know going to this party is a sacrifice for you two, and so that's why we're going to make sure it's well worth it!" Mabel assured him. "We promise you! No distractions! This is all about you two!"

"Yeah, we're not easily distracted twelve-year-olds like we used to be," Dipper agreed before his eyes look in Mabel's direction. "Well...like  _Mabel_  used to be…"

"You were  _too_  distracted!" Mabel argued as he gave him a shove in the arm. "Don't act like you never got distracted by your crush on We-!"

Knowing where she was going with that statement, Dipper promptly placed his hand over her mouth, cutting her off. "Alright, you've made your point! Shut up!" Dipper demanded quietly as his eyes glanced to the side where Wendy was sat, who was luckily distracted by an unrelated and irrelevant side-conversation she was having with Soos, Melody, and Ryland.

He turned back to Stan who was giving the two a look. Then he cracked a slight smile. "You may not be the same twelve-year-olds you used to be, but the both of you are still just as petty."

Dipper and Mabel cracked guilty smiles back at Stan before the three hugged one another and burst out laughing. Ford even smiled as he looked on at the three and even let out a light chuckle. Regardless of how much the twins have changed or how much they had stayed the same, the two Stan twins just felt happy to be reunited with them again. The reunion to them was already the best birthday gift they could ask for.

But to be celebrated upon their return was probably one of the more special moments to them. And while a party now may take away potential time from getting actual work done, they still couldn't wait to spend time with their great niece and nephew again.

Just like old times.

* * *

The rest of the morning had escalated fairly quickly, with everyone finishing out the rest of the chocolate cake before Stan and Ford returned to the basement for further lab work before the party. The afternoon also wasn't too special either, except for Dipper's slight irritation with the realization that he would be missing a bulk of a Ghost Hunters marathon on the UTBAHC due to the party, which goes back to Mabel not mentioning a thing to him or anyone else about the party prior to her surprise announcement. That fact continued to slightly annoy him and make him question the idea of having another party so soon.

Mabel, of course, still didn't mind. With less than an hour before the party, she was still preparing herself and getting dressed up for the occasion. Dipper hung out, writing in his journal as she dabbled around with her makeup in the mirror of their room.

"I still can't believe that Soos and Melody are actually getting married next month!" Mabel said as she placed on her usual eyeliner. "I remember the day we were trying to find him a date and he scared off every girl he came across. Who would've thought that the love of his life would actually end up being the girl who worked at a mall meat stand?" She thought for a moment. "Actually, in hindsight, who wouldn't have thought that?"

"Us at the time, apparently," Dipper said as he wrote I his journal.

"You're right, you're right," Mabel nodded in agreement as she continued on with her makeup. "But still. How exciting is it that we're gonna get to see our best friend get hitched next month?  _Ahhhh_ , I'm already getting teary-eyed just thinking about it!" Mabel shrieked as she wiped her eye.

"Yeah, I'm stoked for Soos too," Dipper nodded. "The guy deserves to live a happy life with someone who makes him happy. And Melody's great. They're perfect for each other, honestly. I couldn't see it any other way."

"Agreed!" Mabel said as proceeded to put on her earrings. She then smirked. "Heh! And maybe next month you'll catch the bouquet. You'll be the next one in line, bro-bro!"

"Isn't that a girl thing?" Dipper asked, looking up from his journal.

"Not for Soos it wasn't!" Mabel told him. "He got struck with the luck of catching the bouquet at Waddles and Gompers' wedding! And look where we are now! If it worked for him, it could work for anyone! Including  _youuu_."

"Whatever you say, sis," Dipper said with a light chuckle, not exactly finding much belief in Soos gaining luck from catching a bouquet at a pretend wedding between animals that she put together herself when they were twelve.

"I'm serious, bro!" Mabel assured him, turning her head toward him. "You might think it's silly, but I can see you totally being next in line to get hitched!"

"Uh, right…" Dipper said awkwardly, trying not to pay much attention to her claims. "And why are we getting into this now?"

"Not to be offensive or anything, Dipper, but let's admit it. You've had some major duds in your love life from Wendy to all the girls that rejected you in high school. Moments that have pushed you away from the dating game when you could totally find someone for you! Maybe even at this party!"

"Who could I possibly find at this party that I haven't already met?" Dipper asked.

"Uhh...lots of girls?" Mabel asked back. "Have you forgotten that it's been  _four years_  since we were last here? Who knows how many new townsfolk and new  _hotties_  there are waiting for you? I mean, Ryland wasn't around four years ago, was he?"

"I don't know, Mabel. I've kinda come to terms with the fact that I'm kinda hopeless at romance," Dipper said glumly as he tried to redirect his focus back into his journal, trying to tune out the ideas of romance.

"That's because you don't even  _try!_ " Mabel told him as she pushed his journal down, trying to grab his attention again. She then grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him up to his feet from his bed. "I mean seriously! Look at you! We're about to have a party with a bunch of people from all over town and you're wearing  _that?_ "

Dipper looked down at his clothes, which were the same that he always wore. He raised an eyebrow, failing to see the issue that Mabel points out. "What's wrong with my clothes?"

"They're the same thing you always wear! It's a party, Dipper! Not another lazy Saturday," Mabel told him bluntly.

Dipper still failed to see how his current wardrobe was such a big problem. It was a casual party, rather than the previous night's costume party, and so he didn't believe there was a need to dress up too fancily. But Mabel being a girl and into fashion as much as she was, of course, she aimed to please.

She wore a sparkly purple top with large, transparent sleeves that hung from her arms. In the middle of the front of the top, there was a sparkly, silver disco ball with protruding sparkles that gave off an illusion that it was spinning whenever Mabel turned or whenever you looked at it from a different angle. Combined with the sparkly top, she wore blue jeans and her best party shoes, which were both made to look nice and to dance in. She also tied some of her hair back into a high ponytail, while also letting some of it hang off the sides of her face.

Dipper, on the other hand, just stuck to his normal blue hoodie, red T-shirt, jeans, sneakers, and hat.

"If you just switched out of that hoodie you wear every day for once and wore something nice, you'd be surprised how much more attention you'd get," Mabel continued to try and convince him as she brushed off the sides of his hoodie. She suddenly caught a smell, however, and stopped to process it. She quickly knew exactly what it was and backed up from Dipper, letting out a disgusted groan as she covered up her nose. "Dipper! Did you not shower at all today?"

"Mabel, I'm a busy man! Showering takes a lot of time out of my day, so I only do it when it's really necessary," Dipper defended.

"Are you insane? Since when has this been a thing?" Mabel asked, not recalling Dipper's lack of showering habits in the past. "First you hardly wash your clothes, now you hardly wash yourself? When  _was_  the last time you even showered?"

"Uh, you sure you wanna know that?" Dipper asked, hesitant about telling her.

"You know what, I don't," she said as she kept her disgusted look up. "Look, Dipper, I'm just trying to help. Seriously, if you really want to get a girl to like you, all you gotta do is clean yourself up and put on something that doesn't make you look like your homeless friend." She proceeded to walk over to the door and open it up, taking a step outside before turning back. "And be confident!"

She proceeded to shut the door right behind her as she left the room, leaving Dipper alone. He let out a sigh as he looked around the empty room. He turned to his left and quickly noticed himself in Mabel's mirror. He stood in front of it and looked at himself for a moment, analyzing his appearance.

Maybe it was because of his lack of self-confidence, but admittedly, he could agree that he didn't believe he looked his most appealing at that moment.

_Maybe Mabel's right…_

He then glanced over at his dresser and began to stare at it.

Then he began to think...

* * *

In the basement, Stan stood in front of the mirror wearing a long-sleeved salmon button-up shirt. He left the top few buttons opened up, allowing for exposure of some of his top chest hairs and his gold chain necklace. He also wore black slacks and a pair of dress shoes. He was also cleanly shaven now, having actually taken the time to shave off the thick stubble he had been growing since getting stuck in the middle of the ocean.

For the first time in awhile, he actually felt clean.

He straightened out his sleeves around his wrist and then placed his hands on his waist, looking at himself. He smiled, even playfully flicking his fingers like guns at himself admirably.

"Still got it," he said to himself. He then proceeded to open a drawer and pull out some aftershave. He placed some on his hands and patted his face down. It stung a little, especially considering it had been over a week since his last good shave, but it was nothing he couldn't handle.

Behind him, Ford stood wearing a fancy beige jacket over his red turtleneck. This combo made him appear similar to how he did with his trench coat, but it looked classier and less menacing. Especially combined with his beige slacks and brown dress shoes. He had also shaved earlier as well, though in a way that wasn't quite as subtle.

He stood by a large tank of water, dumping pebbles from a box of Frooby Frebbles. Inside the tank, Berry sat at the bottom, happily watching as sugary cereal pieces hit the surface of the water. Ford finished dumping pebbles and placed the box to the side.

"Snacken's fed," Ford claimed as he walked over to the mirror beside Stan. He then glanced down at Meridian, which he had also replaced the battery for, and looked at the time. "Judging by the time, the party should be starting already."

"It'll be fine. It's a party thrown for us, ain't it?" Stan asked as he placed the aftershave away. "Who cares if we're a few minutes late?"

"Not proposing it as a problem, but just something to take note of," Ford clarified. "Although, I have to ask, Stan. Are you sure you wish to go through with this whole celebration?"

"Go through with this party? Of course," Stan assured him. "I didn't put on slacks for nothing, Sixer. It was a nightmare getting them on and it'll be another nightmare getting them off. So even if I didn't want to go through with this, I might as well."

"I'm just a bit paranoid about the possibility that Bill might take over and pose a threat," Ford admitted as he gave a look of uncertainty.

"Well, if it's a party, I'm guessing there's gonna be music. Won't the constant dance music beating into my brain stop him from coming out?" Stan asked.

"I suppose, although that's a problem in the sense that it's just increasing Bill's immunity to the music affecting him," Ford explained. "And so that'll make that type of music ineffective against him the future, should we need to use it."

"Then I guess that'll be a problem for another day if it happens," Stan shrugged off.

"It doesn't have to be a problem at all though," Ford pressed.

"Ford, you really wanna bail out on a party by your great niece a few seconds after the thing even started?" Stan questioned, turning to him with a look. "You really wanna back out  _now?_ "

"I don't…" Ford assured him. "I'm just...a little worried is all. About Bill. About you. About showing up in the town's public eye again for the first time in four years."

"Hey, if they didn't give a damn the first time you came back after thirty years, they ain't gonna give a damn after four years," Stan told him as he wrapped a brotherly arm around his neck. "As for Bill, I know you got my back if I start acting funny. You're good at pointing that stuff out. Just stick beside me at all times, keep me away from sharp objects, and make sure I'm never in a position to hurt anyone. You know what they say: have fun, by not too much fun. Got it?"

Ford chuckled as he patted his brother's back a few times. "Got it."

"That's the spirit," Stan nodded as he let go of his brother. He then walked over to the side and searched a few of Ford's lab cabinets. "Now, you got any cologne around here? I showered but I still smell dimensional octopus on me, and I could really go without that tonight."

"I don't believe I have any usable cologne or products of that sort down here," Ford replied as he thought about it. "Never found much use for those sorts of products."

"Christ, you and Dipper really are alike in more ways than just brains," Stan answered as he opened a cabinet, recalling Dipper's hormone infused stench and severe lack of bathing.

However, despite Ford's claims, he spotted a bunch of cosmetic products within the cabinet he had opened. Including a bottle of cologne.

"Ah, here we go!" Stan exclaimed as he grabbed the cologne bottle and examined it. "What are you talking about, Ford? You got some cologne right here."

"I do?" Ford asked, raising an eyebrow. He was unable to recall exactly why he had cologne stored in one of his cabinets.

"Yeah, you do," Stan nodded as he read the label. " _Perfect Man Cologne_. Little on the nose, huh? Should probably let you know Ford: just because a company calls themselves perfect, doesn't mean they actually are."

" _Perfect Man Cologne?_  Wait a minute..." Ford restated to himself, finding slight familiarity with the name. Suddenly, he gasped as he realized what it really was.

"Based on the name, it's probably mediocre at best," Stan said as he continued to examine the name with uncertainty. Then he shrugged and held it up to himself, ready to spray. "But anything's better than nothing."

"STANLEY, NO!" Ford exclaimed as he rushed over to him.

Stan found himself caught off guard when Ford suddenly swiped the cologne from his hands. He narrowed his eyes at him. "Alright, fine. You can use it first. Christ…"

"No, it's not what you think, Stanley. Just forget about it," Ford said somewhat frantically as he tried to shove the cologne back into the cabinet.

"What's gotten into you? Why are you acting so…huh?" Stan questioned as he caught a quick glimpse of the rest of the cosmetics in the cabinet.

"Nothing! Don't worry about it!" Ford tried to assure him as he attempted to close the cabinet.

However, Stan placed his hand in the way as he kept his eyes focused on the cosmetics inside. His eyes bulged as he read the names of the other products.

"What is this?" Stan asked as he picked up some of the products. " _Objectively Perfect Hair Gel?_   _Perfect Teeth Toothpaste? '_ Created by  _Stanford Pines?!'_ What the hell is all this stuff, Ford? You aren't planning something crazy, are you?"

"No! Stan, it's all nothing! I swear!" Ford exclaimed, face starting to redden a bit. "They're all just...failed college experiments."

"What? You mean you were so desperate for girls in college you made a bunch of crazy science experiments to get them to fall in love with you?" Stan asked, looking somewhat disgusted.

"What?! No! Not to get them to fall in love with me!" Ford exclaimed. "I'm not unethical! I was simply trying to make myself more appealing, that's all. Not emotionally and affectionately manipulate anyone."

"Man, that's gold!" Stan exclaimed with an amused smile, as he lightly slammed his fist down on his knee. "Did any of this stuff actually work?"

"No. Why do you think I said failed experiments?" Ford said as he looked on at the products disappointedly. "The hair gel worked fine for a week until repeated use gave me a permanent side effect so the only way I could ever cut or shave off any of the hair on my body is by burning it off with fire."

"That explains your shaving habits…" Stan claimed as he recalled Ford's odd way of shaving. "I always knew you weren't telling the truth when you said you did it like that just because it was faster."

"Well, it  _is_  faster," Ford reinforced. "Perhaps a more extraordinary method, but the speed is definitely a plus," he said as he rubbed his face.

"Well, what's wrong with the toothpaste and cologne then?" Stan asked.

"The toothpaste simply gave me irremovable onion breath for a month. Perhaps my hardest month of college too," Ford said as he stared forward, remembering the point in time. "And the cologne is my biggest mistake, as instead of simply giving me a pleasing scent, I had somehow designed it to attract anybody and anything that made near physical contact with me."

"How the hell did you manage to make something like that from  _cologne?_ " Stan asked, genuinely curious.

"I don't know. It's been so long. I just remember that it was Valentine's and I had borrowed a good-scented ingredient from an odd fellow who wore wings and utilized a belt full of similar substances," Ford shrugged as he tried to remember it. "But it was an incredibly awkward experience. You can only imagine how uncomfortable it is to have all of your professors infatuated with you yet still not curve your test grades from an A to an A+. Also, mosquitoes were even more of a nuisance than normal.

"Right. You sure know what a  _real_  problem is," Stan said sarcastically in response to what Ford considers his most major problem. "And not that I'd want you to, but you never thought at the time about...ya know…actually fixing them to work without issues?"

"Not at all, nor have I been interested in pursuing a romantic relationship in years," Ford admitted. "They don't serve use to me anymore."

"So throw them out? Why hold onto them?" Stan suggested.

"I've been meaning to dispose of them, but with the type of effects they produce, I've been waiting until I had a proper way to do it so that they don't affect anyone else or the world itself," Ford explained. "Disposing of such a large amount of leftover material could have potentially disastrous consequences. Trees that can no longer be chopped or cut down and would only be affected by burning them. The stench of onions following you no matter where you go. Walking through the woods to suddenly be hugged by a lustful bear. Just to name a few."

"Alright, yeah...I'm no longer comfortable talking about this anymore," Stan admitted, eye twitching slightly.

"Just let me worry about getting rid of it all later," Ford said as she shut the cabinet doors with all the products placed back inside. He proceeded to begin making his way over to the elevator. "C'mon, let's head up on our way."

"So you mean I gotta deal with this octopus smell all night then?" Stan asked, dissatisfied with the continued stench of the Snacken surrounding him.

"Honestly, it's hardly even noticeable," Ford claimed as he pressed the elevator button.

"It is to me," Stan said as he made his way over to the elevator.

"Well, it's probably the best you've smelled in years anyway," Ford jabbed just as the elevator arrived. "Now c'mon, let's get moving. Don't wanna be too late now."

The two boarded the elevator and made their way upstairs. They stepped out of the vending machine and into the gift shop, shutting the machine right behind them. They noticed that the Shack itself seemed pretty empty and quiet as they made their way over to the floor room.

"I wonder how set up this party is," Stan said as they walked.

"I mean, it was all designed by Mabel," Ford replied. "Which I suppose could go a number of different ways."

"You think anybody even showed up?" Stan asked, wondering about the possibility.

"She did say she invited the whole town, did she not?" Ford reminded him.

"Right, but really. Who the hell would want to go to a party to celebrate the return of two random old men after a few years?" Stan asked.

However, at that moment, the two soon found themselves stepping out into the floor room. And immediately upon entrance, the two froze as they caught sight of the dozens of people on the dance floor. The dance music was blaring and thumping as everyone danced and had a good time. Even more guests continued to show up and enter through the back doors as well. There was even a snack and drink table already set up and the lights shined bright purple and pink hues, which illuminated the place.

Everything looked orderly and perfectly put together. The hard, late night work of a Mabel Juice-induced Mabel Pines was certainly impressive.

"Yo, dudes!" Soos's voice was suddenly heard over a microphone. Stan and Ford turned their heads over to him in the corner of the floor room, reprising his role as DJ. Melody stood behind him at the booth, managing the equipment beside the wall. Soos looked over at them, having noticed that they entered the room and pointed them out. "We got the Stan dawgs in the house! Can we give the bros a 'welcome home' shout-out?"

All the partygoers paused their dancing for a moment and turned their heads in the direction of the Stans. They then erupted into a series of applauding and cheering for them.

Stan and Ford stood with surprised looks for a moment as they processed what was happening. Eventually, wide smiles drew across their faces.

"You know, Ford. If someone had told me thirty years ago that there'd come a day where I'd be cheered on at a welcome home party alongside my brother, I wouldn't have ever believed them," Stan told him as he kept his eyes fixated on those applauding them.

"Neither would I," Ford admitted. He then turned back to Stan with a warm smile. "I'll have been glad to have been proven wrong though." Stan turned to him and smiled back.

"This is a great moment and all, but I think that it could use some epic lightning!" Soos exclaimed as he reached a hand for his keyboard.

Soos had a keyboard set up at his DJ Booth and aimed for the rightmost key, which would trigger the lightning sound effect. However, upon hitting it, nothing happened. He continued tapping the key, trying to get the sound to trigger but was unsuccessful. He then began pressing various keys on the keyboard, but none of them played sounds either.

"Hmmph. Looks like the keyboard's batteries are dead," Soos realized as he looked down at it.

"I think we have spares upstairs in the bedroom," Melody said, turning her head toward him.

"I'll go grab some real fast," Soos told her as he stepped out of the stand. "Stay here and make sure that playlist stays fresh!"

The applause eventually died down and the partygoers resumed dancing and doing their own things again. Stan and Ford took a few steps forward, stepping away from there entrance and trying to make their way around the party.

"There are my favorite Grunkles!" Mabel shouted as she and Waddles made their way over to them. She greeted them both with quick hugs before getting a look at their outfits and shaved faces. "You two surely cleaned up compared to how you looked this morning!"

"Well, it's a party thrown for us, ain't it?" Stan asked as he straightened out his sleeves. "Gotta spiff it up."

"I'll say," Mabel agreed. "Though no matter how spiffy you two try to look, it ain't gonna stop those hairs from graying."

"Aw, c'mon. Why you gotta remind us? Can't you let a pair of old men feel young for a change?" Stan asked, pretending like the insult was somewhat hurtful.

"Might be asking a little too much considering the party I just threw," Mabel said slickly with a smile.

"Ah, you've really learned to talk back as a teen, haven't you?" Stan asked, somewhat impressed. "I couldn't be prouder."

"I learn from the best," Mabel said, gesturing toward him.

"Damn right you do," Stan said proudly, rubbing the top of Mabel's head lightly, prompting a chuckle out of her. "But seriously, kid, the party's great. You put more work into this party than I ever could getting into bed."

"Indeed," Ford nodded. "This party is excellent, Mabel. Thank you so much for putting in such effort and time for old folks like us."

"Aw, it's nothing. You two deserve it all after everything you've been through with Bill and all that stupid stuff," Mabel said. "I'm just happy to have my Grunkles back in my life after all these years. Once Dipper gets here, we'll all be together again. And the two of us will be there for you all night. We'll never leave your si-  _OH MY GOD!_  CANDY! GRENDA!"

Mabel's attention had suddenly redirected toward the entrance, where she spotted none other than Candy Chiu and Grenda walk in. They hadn't noticed her immediately, but Mabel's shouting quick grabbed their attention. Their faces displayed wide smiles as they spotted their best friend for the first time in forever years.

"MABEL!" they both shouted as they ran over to her. Mabel ran over to them as well and the two met in the middle, embracing one another tightly and emotionally.

"I can't believe you guys are really here!" Mabel said happily she hugged them.

"I can't believe that  _we're_  really here either!" Grenda said with her deep masculine voice.

"We missed you so much!" Candy exclaimed.

"I missed you girls too!" Mabel replied as she pulled away from the hug and began focusing her attention on their appearances and outfits. " _AHHHH!_  LOOK AT YOU TWO!"

" _AHHHH!_  LOOK AT YOU!" Grenda shrieked excitedly, gesturing toward her appearance.

" _AHHHH!_  WE'RE ALL TEENS!" Candy shrieked as well.

" _AHHHHHHHHHHH!_ " the three shrieked all at once, holding each other's hands and jumping up and down like they were kids again.

Stan and Ford watched as the girls shrieked and reunited with one another. Ford felt somewhat weird considering the statement that Mabel had just made prior to the girls' arrival.

"Well, so much for never leaving our side," Ford stated a bit dejectedly.

"Ah, give her a break, Poindexter," Stan said, nudging him in the arm slightly. "Those are her best friends. Looks like she hasn't seen them in a long time either. They're having the same moment that we had last night. Just let 'em be for a few, will ya?"

"You're right. I suppose that sounded a bit possessive, didn't it?" Ford said, taking back his previous statement.

"Yeah, just relax," Stan said as he placed a hand on his shoulder. "She worked hard on this thing for us. Let her have her own space for a little. It's not like she's completely forgotten about us."

"Yes, yes. Of course. My mistake," Ford nodded, admitting fault for his words. "I do wonder where Dipper is at though."

"Yeah, where is that kid?" Stan asked, curious too.

* * *

_Knock, knock, knock._

Derrick knocked on the door to Dipper and Mabel's room, having just arrived moments ago. He had run into Mabel in the halls before she went to the floor room, to which she uninterestedly redirected him upstairs as to where Dipper was. And so he simply stood at the door, waiting for an answer.

After a brief moment, the door opened and Dipper stood at the door. As soon as Derrick got a look at him, his eyes bulged.

Dipper stood in front of him wearing one of his red T-shirts, except this one looked like it had its sleeves ripped off moments ago, with loose threads hanging out from the base of the shirt. On top of that, his hair was a complete, unorganized mess and more so than usual. It was shiny and stuck out oddly in some places as if he had just attempted to gel it.

Derrick scanned him from head to toe, eyes widened in shock as if he didn't know who was looking at.

"So, uh, do I have to ask?" Derrick questioned as he looked him back in the eye.

"My sister threw a party for my great uncles' return," Dipper replied, rubbing his arm awkwardly.

"Yeah, I know that," Derrick said holding up one of the copied fliers in hand. "She stapled this to my granddad's front door. And I think she knows where I'm staying now because she didn't do that to any of the neighbors." He crumbled the flier up and tucked it into his pocket. "So she threw a party and  _that's_  what you're wearing to it?"

"What? It's not that bad, is it?" Dipper asked as he looked down at himself.

Rather than answering that question, Derrick gave Dipper an open-mouthed stare as he raised an eyebrow as if that was a question that shouldn't even need to be asked. Dipper caught this look and slouched forward acceptingly.

"Alright, it's really bad," he admitted.

"Dipper, I don't respect anyone who blatantly rips off their sleeves like that," Derrick told him bluntly. "I thought you were better than that. I thought you were  _smarter_  than that."

"Look, Mabel got on me about being unable to get girls, and she said that if I fixed up myself up a bit, I'd actually have some hope," Dipper explained as he walked back into his room. "Told me that getting better clothes would help me."

"God, man, you listen to your sister way too much," Derrick groaned as he processed the explanation. "To an extent, I see what she means. Girls do like guys who clean up, but honestly, you look good enough in your hoodie.  _You_  don't need to fix up your appearance to impress girls, and even if you did, ripping off your damn sleeves isn't the way to do it."

"You see? That's basically what I said!" Dipper claimed as he put his hoodie back on and zipped it up, which covered up his torn sleeves and made him look normal again. He put his hands through his hair and roughed them around, undoing the mess he made with the gel. "I don't need fancy new clothes to impress girls! I don't need hair gel! I don't even need to shower! Nor do I need to-"

"Woah there, cowboy!" Derrick cut him off when he heard what he said. "We're talking clothes here. Where the hell did you get not showering from?"

"You know me, Derrick. I'm a busy guy. Showering takes a lot out of time out of my days, so I only do it when it's necessary," Dipper explained to him.

"Dude, you're going to be seventeen in a few months and you don't even take consistent showers?" Derrick asked, eye twitching in slight disgust.

"Well, I mean…"

"Dipper, look at me," Derrick said, gesturing toward his appearance. "I can tell you that as someone who likes to wear the same raggedy hoodie and jeans every day, I still like to keep my body clean underneath. And I don't even do much with my life. You're basically a monster hunter. With all that time you spend running through these woods, I'd expect you, of all people, to be the one in need of regular showers most."

Derrick had a point. For all the times he has spent going after creatures and dealing with several falls and rolls in the woods, he should probably care enough to bathe more often.

He sighed as he sat down on his bed. "You don't know how demotivating it is when you've built up four long years of awkward, embarrassing rejection with little to no adventuring or some means of escape to the side. I guess with the opportunity to finally have that escape, I just became kinda careless about my hygiene because I'm not aiming to impress anybody."

"Dipper, look. Your clothes aren't going to drive anyone away, but your stench will," Derrick told him bluntly. "You need good hygiene, man. That's important for any relationship. Not even just romantic ones, but your friends and family too."

Dipper sighed guiltily as he began making his way toward the door. "Alright, fine. I'll just shower real quick."

"Nah, forget that," Derrick told him, which prompted him to stop in his place. "Party's already going on. We need to get out there quick if you're gonna beat the cooler guys to the available ones."

" _Cooler_  guys?" Dipper questioned, slightly offended by this claim.

"What you need is cologne," Derrick told him, dismissing his reply. "Spray some all over yourself and cover up your natural smell with something much more pleasant to the nose."

"Right. Well, where are we gonna get some?" Dipper asked. "I don't have any cologne."

"Alright, well, maybe we can borrow some from someone else," Derrick suggested. "There's gotta be someone around here who has some."

" _Do, do-do, do, do_ ," Soos sung as he walked down the upstairs hallway with a pack of batteries in hand, passing by Dipper's open door. Dipper and Derrick's heads quickly turned to him as he passed by.

"Maybe Soos has some," Dipper suggested before making his way out of his room to catch up to him, with Derrick following behind. "Soos!"

Soos stopped walking and turned around toward the two. He gave a greeting smile. "Oh, 'sup Dipper! And Dipper's friend!"

"That name just about sums up my purpose," Derrick said sarcastically.

"Why aren't you dudes downstairs at the party?" Soos asked them.

"I'm, uh, still getting ready," Dipper replied. "I was wondering though if you might have any cologne I might be able to borrow?"

"Cologne, eh?" Soos repeated as he thought about it, stroking his chin. "You never seemed much like a cologne guy, Dip Dawg. Is there someone you're trying to impress?" he asked with a grin.

"What? Uh, no!" Dipper denied with a nervous chuckle. "That's not what I need it for. I just, uh, want it to…"

"Dude hasn't taken a shower in God knows how long and he stinks," Derrick spoke out bluntly. "He needs a little freshener."

Dipper stared forward at Soos blankly as he processed Derrick's unsubtle explanation. While he was correct, he felt he could've gone without going into that much detail.

"Oh, well, I don't know if you'd want my cologne," Soos said as he dug into his pocket and pulled out a small bottle. "It might not fit your needs."

"I'll take what I can get," Dipper said, holding his hand out to accept the bottle. He held it out in his hand and looked down at it. As they read it, both him and Derrick raised an eyebrow. "Uh...Soos? What's this?"

"Bacon-scented cologne," Soos said with a smile. "Been using it for years. Melody loves this stuff. The fresh scent of a crispy, lean meat reminds us of when we met at Meat Cute. Not exactly a good 'freshener', but I still highly recommend it, dude."

Dipper and Derrick stared at him with staggered looks, neither of them sure of how to respond. Dipper then looked down at the cologne again before holding it back out to Soos, smiling uncomfortably as he did so.

"Thanks, Soos...but uh...you're right. It doesn't really serve our needs," Dipper told him nicely as Soos took the cologne back.

"All good, dude! But still, if you ever need to smell like bacon, I got you!" Soos said as he put the cologne back into his pocket. He then turned back around and head back for the stairs. "I'll see you dudes at the party!"

As he left, Dipper and Derrick continued to just stand quietly as they stared forward, still staggered. After a brief moment of silence, Derrick glanced over at Dipper.

"Well, Dipper. If there's anything to take away from that, it's that if someone like him can get a girl, then so can you," Derrick said as he patted him on the back.

Dipper let out a sigh as he facepalmed. "Look, let's just think of another way we can get cologne."

"Hey, what about your great uncles?" Derrick suggested. "Maybe they got something you can use."

"Asking my great uncles for cologne?" Dipper restated, thinking about it. "I don't know, man."

"Come on. What're you worried about? They're old men. They'll understand," Derrick said as he made his way down the stairs.

Dipper followed behind him slowly, both of them making their way from the stairs over into the gift shop. "I just don't know if Stan and Ford are really the types of people to hold onto stuff like that. Stan might...but…"

"You said that Ford's the smart one with all the lab stuff, right?" Derrick asked, recalling the things Dipper used to mention about his great uncles to him. He then took a step right in front of the vending machine and examined it. "If so, maybe the guy makes his own cologne or something."

"Well, if he does, he totally doesn't use it then. Been around him enough times to know," Dipper told him as he stood behind Derrick. "Unless his cologne is the constant scent of smoke and wood."

"He smokes?" Derrick asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No, but he sets his face on fire," Dipper clarified casually.

" _Ooookay_  then...well, that's still a step up from bacon cologne, albeit, a small one," Derrick said as he looked at the corner between the vending machine and the wall. After seeing the Stan and Ford depart into the basement the previous night, he knew all about the hidden door. Now he needed to figure out how to get to it. "How do we get back there?"

Without saying a word, Dipper promptly stepped up the machine and held his fingers up to the buttons. He typed in 'A-1-B-C-3' before pressing the enter button. He stepped back a few inches, pulling Derrick aside with him before the vending machine suddenly popped out and opened, revealing the doorway into the lab. Derrick stared at the open door in awe.

"Look at you. Still the vending machine expert here as when I met you," Derrick said as he nudged Dipper in the arm with his elbow before walking up to the doorway and walking inside and heading downstairs. "God, this is awesome."

"Yeah, let's just quickly go down and ask them, then come back up," Dipper said as he followed behind him, putting his hand on the side of the machine to close the doorway up again as he entered.

* * *

The two took the elevator to the bottom level of the shaft, reaching the laboratory. The doors opened, and Derrick held a look of genuine amazement as he looked around at all the machines. The two took a few steps inside, simply examining the place.

"Wow…" Derrick said in astonishment as he leaned his hand forward to touch one of the machines. "Your great uncle has a lot of time on his hands."

"Don't touch anything," Dipper commanded, pulling his arm back and stopping him. He then turned back and looked straight down the hall of machinery. "Grunkle Stan? Great Uncle Ford? It's me, Dipper!" He walked forward a little bit more and glanced around some more, but found nobody. "Anyone here?"

"They could be upstairs at the party already," Derrick reminded him as he looked around.

"Probably. I don't think anybody's here," Dipper said as he continued searching the lab to no avail, even glancing over at the large fish tank holding Berry inside. He then displayed a timid look. "And I don't feel so good about being here without them. We should probably get out of here."

"Dipper, seriously?" Derrick questioned, narrowing his eyes. "We're hanging in your great uncle's lab, not leaving class without permission."

"Well, we're in my great uncle's lab  _without permission_ ," Dipper told him. "C'mon, let's just go. Screw the cologne."

"No, c'mon. It'll be quick," Derrick said as he began searching cabinets.

Dipper's eyes bulged as he ran over to him. " _What are you doing?_  I said not to touch anything!"

"Would you chill out?" Derrick pleaded as he continued opening cabinets. "I'm just looking around."

"Opening cabinets is not 'just looking around!' It's  _opening cabinets!_ " Dipper argued as he placed his hands over his head in distress.

Derrick dismissed his concerned shouting and kept opening cabinets. Suddenly, he opened a set of cabinets where the contents inside caught his eye. "Ahah! Here we go!" he exclaimed as he placed his hand inside and grabbed a bottle. " _Perfect Man Cologne_. Well, that's a little on the nose, don't ya think?"

"We shouldn't be touching this stuff without Ford knowing…" Dipper said, looking back at the elevator with paranoia of Ford showing up. "It could be dangerous."

"It's cologne, Dipper. Come on, the worst it could possibly do is make you smell even worse," Derrick tried to affirm him as he looked back inside the cabinet. "Look, your great uncle even has hair gels and toothpaste in here. This is probably his hygiene cabinet or something."

"I still don't know. From my experience, it seems like most things that belong to him are experiments that have some sort of abnormality to them," Dipper said as he rubbed the back of his neck reluctantly. "He has a body-switching carpet, man."

"Tag looks pretty normal to me," Derrick said as he quickly examined it, not paying attention to much to the fine details and words. "I'm not familiar with the brand  _Perfect Man_ , but at worst, it's probably some cheap off-brand that he bought just cause he took the name too seriously. I mean, he's like what, eighty?" He held the bottle out to Dipper. "Still, just try it, man."

Dipper hesitated for a moment, but then held his hand out and accepted the cologne. He examined it for a moment before proceeding to pull the cap off and give it a sample smell, wanting to know what kind of scent he'd exactly be spraying on himself were he to use it.

The scent was somewhat odd to describe, honestly. The number one thing he could point out was this sparkly sensation he felt in his nose upon smelling it. He didn't know exactly what to make of the feeling, but once he got to the actual scent, it was very fresh. Like a soft breeze at the ocean, except you weren't at the ocean during summer, but during the winter. A cool kinda air, but the air was sparkling. Like something was on fire and you could feel the embers of the flame. A very odd mix of opposing descriptions, but that's how it smelt and felt.

Odd, yet a pleasing odd. Which was fitting for someone like Ford to own.

"How's it smell?" Derrick asked.

"Kinda weird, but I like it," Dipper said with a light smile.

"Spray some on, then," Derrick told him.

Dipper stared at it for a moment, still slightly hesitant. He questioned once more whether he really needed the cologne. Was he truly looking to impress anyone tonight? Not really, as the idea of dating has taken a toll on him since his attempt at asking Madison Calias on the last day of school ended uneventfully. He's been burnt by girls so many times throughout high school that it essentially burnt him out on the overall idea of romance. It was gonna need to take someone really special to get him in his feelings again, and he didn't think a bit of cologne was gonna attract that person.

Nonetheless, there was still a party going. And if Mabel and Derrick are telling him that he reeks, he probably reeks. The very least he could do is cover it up with something that smells decent before he has time to properly shower later. Even if he's not in the mingling mood, he should still be approachable.

He placed his finger on the dispenser and aimed it himself. He pressed down and let out light sprays among his body. He sprayed a few times on his torso, his arms, his neck, his legs...he sprayed all over himself and multiple times. He never used cologne himself before, and so he wasn't quite sure when enough was enough. So, he kept going throughout his body until he got a relatively strong smell.

Derrick was quick to realize when he was spraying too much. "Alright, man. I think that's enough," he said as he took a few steps toward him, holding out his hand out slightly. Dipper kept pressing down on the dispenser and spraying though. "Dude, enough! That's too much!" He reached forward and got close enough to snag the cologne bottle from him. "Enough, man. Geez, have you ever used this stuff before?"

"No, I just thought I would really need to cover up the smell," Dipper told him.

"Well, trust me, man. A few sprays would've been…"

Derrick cut himself off as he began to smell the cologne as it aromatically came from Dipper. He froze as he processed his smell, to which there was a sudden pink flash of sparkles within his eyes. Then, after a moment, he unfroze and began to gaze at Dipper.

"...enough..." he finished, his eyes completely locked in on Dipper's.

"Oh, sorry. Again, first time using this stuff," Dipper apologized. "The smell isn't too strong now, is it?"

Derrick continued to gaze at Dipper, his pupils growing larger. "No, man. You smell...great."

"Really?" Dipper asked with a smile, his eyes showing hope. "Alright! Great!" He held out the cologne back to Derrick. "Just put this back where you found it and let's get out of here before anyone finds us!"

Derrick promptly accepted the cologne, while still keeping a fixating a gaze on Dipper, which he failed to notice as he quickly turned around and walked toward the elevator.

"Anything for you, my man!" Derrick called back with flirtatious intentions, yet in a casual enough tone for Dipper to process it as nothing more than normal banter from him. Too fixated on Dipper, however, Derrick paid little mind to the cologne and carelessly placed it on the counter below the open cabinet before catching up with him. The elevator was open and he stood right beside him, though a little closer than he normally did. Not a difference Dipper was able to catch at that moment though.

"Gonna be honest, I do feel better about this whole party thing now," Dipper admitted as he turned to his friend. "I feel a bit more confident."

"That's great, man! I'm glad you're feeling that way!" Derrick said as he pat Dipper on the back.

"Thanks?" Dipper said with an odd chuckle, caught off guard slightly by Derrick's positivity. "You're pretty positive all of the sudden."

"Well, I mean, you've been my best friend for these past few years, and you've always been so doubtful and afraid," Derrick said as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Just nice to see you finally have some self-confidence. Makes you look more admirable."

"Wow, that means a lot, man," Dipper said with a smile. "Though I owe it to you. The whole cologne idea was yours and I wouldn't be like this right now if we hadn't gone with it."

"Please, this is beyond the cologne at this point," Derrick said, face reddening slightly.

"Whatever you say, bro," Dipper shrugged, still oblivious to Derrick's flirtatious mannerisms. He finally pressed the elevator button. "Now let's get our party on!" He processed that statement for a second. "That sounded lame, didn't it?"

"Please.  _Nothing_ you say is lame," Derrick told him as the elevator doors began to close.

" _Ha-ha_. Very funny," Dipper said sarcastically, processing that statement as nothing more than another casual jab at him, just as the elevator doors shut.

 


	28. Many Happy Returns: Part 2

"It was insane! The car was hardly even recognizable after we pelted it!" Lee said with a chuckle.

"A hundred and twenty-five balloons filled with straight paint!" Nate added. "Professor Higgins was  _pissed!_  Tambry took like twenty photos, of course."

"Twenty _-five_ ," Tambry corrected with a slight smirk as she stared on at her phone, laying against Robbie Valentino as the two sat in a set of chairs.

"You should've seen it, Wendy. The look on his face was absolutely priceless," Robbie said with a chuckle.

The gang of friends all sat within a corner of the floor room, each of them sitting in the chairs set up. Wendy sat in one of the middle seats between them all, holding a plastic cup of punch in her hand. All of her friends were laughing with the exception of Tambry, who just held an amused smirk while her eyes still paid more attention to her phone. As amused as her friends were, Wendy looked somewhat unsure about how to feel.

"The best part is: we all got away clean," Lee added as he kicked back in his chair.

"Guys, as funny as that is, you really shouldn't be risking getting yourselves in trouble because of me," Wendy said, rubbing the back of her neck somewhat guiltily.

"Please, Red. We're not risking getting in trouble because of you," Nate assured her.

"Right. We're  _risking_  getting in trouble because of what they did to you," Lee clarified. "They mess with one of us, they mess with all of us."

"That's sweet, but still. You got your revenge on Professor Higgins. Just leave it at that when I'm gone, won't ya?" Wendy asked, giving a slight smile.

"Yeah, alright," Lee, Nate, and Tambry all agreed at the same time.

"I don't know. I still feel like there's more we can do," Robbie claimed, which prompted an unnoticed look from Tambry. "Maybe we can go around all his classes collecting failed essays and then stuff his mailbox with them!"

"Robbie, no!" Tambry refused, nudging him violently in the arm without taking her eyes off the phone screen. "First off, that idea sucks. Second, Wendy already said to quit it. The paint's enough. We're done. Stop being stubborn like always."

"Right. I'll stop being stubborn when you figure out how to put that phone down," Robbie said, rolling his eyes.

"Seriously? You wanna start with this again? Now?" Tambry asked, actually turning her head to him as she sat off of him and narrowed her eyes. "You used to have no issues with me using my phone before.  _Now_  it's a problem for you?"

" _Before_ , you actually paid attention to me!" Robbie exclaimed, getting annoyed.

"Oh, right.  _Now_  you're asking for attention," Tambry argued, crossing her arms. "After all those times you pushed me away for trying to give it to you in favor of your stupid, mediocre band!"

" _Mediocre?!_ " Robbie exclaimed, showing genuine offense to this comment.

"GUYS!" Wendy exclaimed getting between the two as they entered standoff positions with one another. She wrapped her arms around the two. "Would you two quit being so petty with one another? God, you both used to be so much less annoying."

"Sorry," the couple told her stubbornly, as they glanced away from one another.

"You better be," Wendy said as she let go of them and stood back up. "We only have a few more days for hangouts like this as a group and you guys aren't gonna be spending them fighting all the time."

"Well,  _almost_  as a group," Lee butted in.

"Yeah, where the hell is Thompson at?" Nate asked as he pulled his phone out. "He should be here by now based on what he said in the group chat."

"You still believe him when he says that?" Robbie said as he wrapped his arm back around Tambry. "The guy's always late nowadays."

"Yeah. At least when he's late, it's because he actually has a job," Tambry said passive-aggressively as she went back to her phone screen.

"Tambry, I swear to God…" Robbie said, growing irritated by his girlfriend yet again.

"Guys...can you not?" Wendy pleaded, placing a hand on her face in annoyance as Lee and Nate stood back awkwardly.

"Hey guys!" Mabel's voice called out, which attracted the attention of all of the teens. They watched as Mabel, Candy, and Grenda walked up to them, to which Mabel proceeded to wave at Wendy. "Hi Wendy!"

"'Sup, Mabes," Wendy waved back.

"Yo, wait. That's Mabel?" Nate asked, eyes bulging in surprise. "Mabel Pines?"

"Holy crap, it is," Lee said with a smile as he suddenly recognized her.

"Yep. Girl's all grown up now," Wendy said as she kicked back in her seat. "But she's still the hyper little ass-kicker she was when she was twelve."

"I approve of that nickname," Mabel said as she pointed over at her. "It's so good to see all of you again though!" She glanced over at Lee and Nate. "My favorite bromance: Lee and Nate! Good to see you both still sticking together after all this time! And good to see Lee still holding the title of tallest in the group!"

"Well, that's not a title one just gives up, ya know?" Lee said with a chuckle.

"Sure it is. Just put Wendy in heels. Instant loss," Nate joked, which got a few laughs throughout the group, including Wendy herself.

"Tempting, but I think I'll pass on that," Wendy chuckled. "Lee can keep that title for all I care."

"And Robbie! Tambry! Look at you two!" Mabel said as she glanced over at Robbie with his arm around Tambry. "Still together after all these years!" She then nudged Robbie as she whispered in his ear. "Guess the power of Mabel is still taking effect, huh?"

Robbie narrowed his eyes and gave her a fake smile. "It  _surrre_  is." Tambry didn't even hear what Mabel said, but detecting Robbie's sarcasm, she couldn't help but roll her eyes.

Not detecting his sarcasm nor the bad blood between the two, she simply laughed it off. "How great is it to see you all still hanging out with one another after all this time?" She then realized Thompson's absence as she studied the group for a moment. "Wait, where's Thompson?"

"He's just running late," Wendy told her. "No worries. It's kind of a thing now."

"Well, either way, it's still great to see you all still hanging out together," Mabel said as she walked back toward Candy and Grenda. "I'd love to catch up, but I already got some other gals I gotta make some time for!" She proceeded to walk off alongside the two as she waved back at the gang. "It's nice seeing you all again!"

"Later Mabes!" Wendy called out as she, Lee, and Nate waved at her.

"Glad she hasn't changed," Lee stated.

"Yeah, she's just as nice and cool as we remember," Nate agreed.

"Yeah, Tambry could learn a thing or two from her," Robbie stated.

Tambry then proceeded to elbow him in the stomach without hesitation, which prompted him to wince in pain as she just kept tapping away at her phone. Lee and Nate looked on with unease, just as Wendy facepalmed in annoyance.

* * *

" _Ahhh_ , I still can't believe you two are actually here!" Mabel exclaimed happily as she sat beside Grenda and Candy on the floor room's couch. "Even though we've been video chatting while I was in Piedmont, it still feels so long!"

"I know right?" Grenda agreed. "There have been times where we've missed you so much, we considered literally jumping right into the computer screen so we could end up in Piedmont with you!"

"Well, she did it once," Candy pointed out as she recalled the moment.

"And I broke my computer screen," Grenda added. "WEAKLING!"

"Uh, Grenda, I don't think that's really possible…" Mabel told her.

"We fought a yellow triangle who tried to take over the world a few summers ago," Grenda reminded her. "You really wanna tell me what's possible and what's not?"

Mabel thought for a second before realizing her point. "You're right, you're right…" She then remembered the entire reasons her friends were absent the past few weeks of summer in the first place. "Anyways, Grenda, how was wrestling camp?"

"Boring," she told her straightforward. "I don't know what's up with my parents signing me up every summer. It's always the same routine! Go there, kick some butts, break some bones, then he kicked out and have to deal with a bunch of camp restraining orders. B-O-R-I-N-G! I'm just happy to be home and be able to spend the rest of the summer with my girls!"

"Aw! We're happy to spend the rest of the summer with you two!" Mabel said as she folded her hands gratefully. She then turned to Candy, who sat between them. "What about you, Candy? How was band finals?"

"Well, I'd say the only important thing to be glad about is that we made it to finals anyway," Candy said with a smile as she rubbed the back of her neck.

"Aw, what? Gravity Falls High lost?" Mabel questioned with a look of concern.

"Yes, unfortunately," she said in a somewhat sorrowful tone. "All because the judges liked the opponent's tuba solo."

"A tuba solo?" Mabel questioned, somewhat flabbergasted. "Who the heck even likes the tuba? Even my brother hates it now!"

"Yeah, they're so loud and deep and annoying!" Grenda exclaimed in agreement.

"I know right?" Mabel nodded. She placed a hand on Candy's shoulder. "I'm sorry you guys didn't win, Candy."

"It's okay. It wasn't a  _total_  loss," she said with a smile. She brushed her hair back over her ear as she began to think back to her time in band, even blushing a bit. "I may have  _met someone_  while I was there."

Mabel and Grenda immediately gasped exaggeratedly as she revealed this. The two glanced at one another in shock as they began to bubble up with excitement.

"What?! Oh my gosh, Candy, that's great! I probably don't even know him because I don't even live here, but still, that's great!" Mabel said as she placed her hands on both of Candy's shoulders, wobbling her around excitedly.

"Is it anything  _official?_ " Grenda asked in a curious, yet teasing voice.

"I may have gotten his number," Candy teased back. "But aside from a few chats, nothing's really happened just yet."

Mabel kept vibrating excitedly within her seat as Candy went on. " _Ooooo!_  Look at you go, girl! Don't worry! I'm sure it's only a matter of time before something happens and the sparks begin to fly!"

"Yeah, and at least you're actually talking to him," Grenda said as she folded her arms, looking somewhat upset. "Marius and I are currently on no-speaking terms with one another."

"What?" Mabel questioned in a shocked voice. "What happened?"

"Apparently he thinks that going into the Austrian army is more important than going to see Pony Heist 3 with me!" Grenda explained to the two. "That selfish jerk. All about wanting to save people's lives instead of saving our date night!" She then sighed sadly as she placed her face in her hands. "I'm sorry. I have attachment issues."

"It's okay, Grenda," Candy said as she placed her arms around Grenda and hugged her comfortingly. She turned her head back to Mabel. "Mabel, why don't we talk about your love life instead?" This statement and subject change appeared to garner Grenda's attention back, as she glanced back at Mabel as well with an awaiting look.

"Pfft...who  _me?_ " Mabel attempted to brush off.

"Yes,  _you_ ," the two girls said curiously at the same time.

"Have you met anyone?" Candy asked, tilting her head slightly.

" _Hmmmmm...maayybeee_ ," Mabel teased as she tried to prolong her reveal. "You guys are never gonna  _believe_ who it is though."

"Tell us! Tell us!" the girls chanted excitedly and demandingly.

"Okay, okay!" Mabel accepted as she tried to figure out how to break it down for them. "So remember the last time we video-chatted with one another before Dipper and I came to Gravity Falls and you told me that you saw there was this new person working at the Mystery Sha-"

"Hey, Mabel."

"-aaa...hey, Ryland!" Mabel immediately greeted upon hearing his voice come up behind her. At the same time, she fixed her posture, tone, and smile just as she turned around to face him and his little brother, Evan, right beside him. "And hey Evan! Nice to see you again so soon!"

"Our mom and dad kinda forced me to come along," Evan clarified as his excuse to why he's showing up at yet another party. "But, yeah, it's nice to see you too, I guess."

"Either way, it's always nice to step out of the house every now and then, isn't it?" Ryland said as he rubbed the top of his brother's head.

"Ha-ha. Good one," Evan laughed sarcastically, knowing that his brother was fully aware of his aversion to doing these types of activities.

"Uh, Ryland. Evan. These are my best friends…" Mabel pointed out to the brothers, gesturing over to Candy. "...Candy..."

"Hello!" Candy waved.

"...and Grenda."

"I'm slightly concussed but I can still see you!" Grenda exclaimed as she also waved at them.

"Ha…" Ryland laughed awkwardly, unsure what to make of that comment. "Well, uh, it's nice to meet the both of you. My name's Ryland, and this is my little bro, Evan," he said as he patted Evan on the arm.

"Hey there!" Grenda greeted as she and Candy both waved at Evan.

"Uhh...h-hi…" Evan mumbled nervously as he fixated a gaze upon Candy and one that she didn't appear to even notice.

"Anyway, I'm still a little burnt out on party stuff after last night," Ryland admitted as he sat on the couch arm beside Mabel. "So, while I saw you chilling over here, I thought we could just drop by and hang out as well."

"Yeah, that's totally cool!" Mabel nodded acceptingly and a bit nervously as she looked on at him.

She still felt the need inside to let Candy and Grenda know how she was feeling about Ryland, but she knew she couldn't do that if he was hanging out with them. She needed to get them away for a bit longer. As her eyes glanced around the floor room, they fell upon the table across the room that had the food and drinks, giving her an idea.

"But ya know, we were  _just_  thinking of getting some drinks. It's kinda warm in this part of the room," Mabel said, emphasizing by fanning herself slightly with her hand.

Ryland displayed a look of confusion as he looked straight up and saw the AC sitting right above them, airing them down. If anything, that part of the room should be the least warm.

Mabel caught his eyes glancing at the running AC above them and realized his confusion. "You know. Body heat, right? Three girls sitting close together on a couch?  _Whew!_  Gets heated pretty quickly!" Needing further justification for her excuses, she glanced over at Evan for assistance. "Isn't that how science works, Evan?"

Evan wasn't paying attention however and still gazed upon Candy, who finally noticed his eyes looking directly at her. She and everyone else gave him a confused look as he stood still motionless as he stared on.

"Um...Evan?" Mabel repeated.

"What?" Evan questioned, breaking from his gaze, looking around flusteredly. "What was the question?"

"Uh…" Mabel asked, still somewhat confused.

"Hey, how about Evan and I just go grab that punch for you girls, then?" Ryland offered, kicking himself off from the couch arm and placing his hand on Evan's back as he began leading him away from them. "We'll be right back."

"What just happened?" Evan asked Ryland quietly and shakily as the two walked away. "Why am I sweating? Why am I shaking? What's wrong with my stomach? Am I sick?"

"Yeah. It's a disease called puberty," Ryland answered quietly as he kept leading him toward the snack table.

Mabel watched them until she knew they were out of range. As soon as they were gone, she quickly turned back to Candy and Grenda frantically.

"Alright, so remember that new worker at the Mystery Shack that Candy said she saw before we came to Gravity Falls? Okay, turns out that guy is actually a  _super cute_  guy named Ryland who's really nice and sweet and cool and even knows how to BMX and we've been talking pretty much since the summer began and we even went to the movies one time and I also took care of his little brother, Evan, who was kind of a pain when we first met him but he's actually really sweet too, but Ryland is so much more different than the guys I've crushed on before and I don't know, I really feel like there's something there, ya know?" Mabel quickly, yet understandably shared with her friends.

"So you mean…" Candy began before gasping as she came to a sudden realization. "...you have a crush on the boy who works here!"

"Yes."

"And because you stay here over the summer, that means you see him almost every day!" Candy added.

"Yes!"

"Which means you spend time with him almost every day!" Grenda added as she began to catch on as well.

" _Yes!_ "

"And you two are totally going out!" Candy then proceeded to add.

"Ye...wait, what? No," Mabel shook her head. "We're not going out."

"I thought you said you two went to the movies," Candy brought back up.

"As friends!" Mabel clarified frantically, not wanting them to begin assuming things when Ryland could come back at any second. "We haven't gone on any dates or anything. We're still just friends."

"Well, when are you getting out of that friend zone?" Grenda asked with a grin. "If you two spend as much time together as you say you do, you should tell him how you feel!"

"But I don't wanna rush things between us," Mabel replied as she rubbed her arm reluctantly. "Every time I've rushed into a relationship with a guy, it never goes well. We've been taking our time so far and it's been good. I don't wanna risk ruining that."

"I understand, Mabel, but you know you don't have a lot of time either, right?" Candy asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah. You only have until the summer ends in August before you go back to California," Grenda reminded her. "And if you two get together, you'll have to deal with a long distance relationship. And trust me, the distance has always been the hardest part about being with Marius."

"You can't wait too long if you wanna be able to live that relationship to the fullest extent in person before you go home," Candy explained to her. "August may seem far away, but it'll come before you know it."

"And we're not trying to pressure you, but you  _are_ crushing on a boy who doesn't even live in the same state as you," Grenda stated.

They weren't wrong. Mabel did only have until the end of the summer to seal some kind of status with Ryland. And as Grenda hinted at, she didn't really want to end up falling into a long-distance relationship without much time having a normal relationship.

But at the same time, she hasn't been given any clue of Ryland's feelings for her. Sure, she liked him, but she had absolutely no clue whether he liked her back. He's been a good friend, but nothing demonstrating that he wanted to be more than that.

There was something about Ryland to her that was different than other guys she's dated or had interest in. There was something more natural about him. Something simpler, yet so complex. Normally with guys, she's outgoing with her feelings and isn't afraid to make the first move if she has to. But with Ryland, she found someone who actually made her feel nervous. Sure, she has the tendency to get crazy around guys she likes, but she felt a different kind of crazy with him. And the more she hangs with him, the more comfortable she gets, yet the more nervous she becomes. She had no idea what made him so different, but the fact, in the end, was that he was different.

And regardless of her feelings, she was happy with him as a friend and didn't want to risk scaring him off by rushing her feelings onto him. He still worked for Soos and basically worked downstairs from her bedroom. Was she seriously going to create awkward tension between the two in the same house?

Then again, it ended up working fine for Dipper and Wendy.

But then  _again_ , Ryland isn't Wendy. And she isn't Dipper.

"Okay, I see what you two mean," Mabel admitted. "But I don't want to try to push myself onto him unless I know how he feels about me."

"And how're you gonna find that out?" Grenda asked.

"I'll figure it out," Mabel shrugged off confidently as she tried to reassure herself that Ryland wasn't actually very different and that she could handle him in the same way she's handled other crushes before. "Mabel always figures things out. She's dealt with gnomes, a puppet kisser, and a merman before. A cute blonde guy who rides a bike is  _nothing_."

"Here we are," Ryland's voice was heard from behind as he and Evan stepped back up to the girls holding cups of punch in their hands. Ryland handed one to Mabel while keeping the other for himself, whereas Evan handed both of his cups to Candy and Grenda.

"Thanks, Evan!" Grenda exclaimed as she immediately began to down the punch.

"Thank you, Evan," Candy said with a smile as she accepted the punch.

" _yOu'Re_... _EHEM!_ " Evan cleared his throat loudly as he blushed from embarrassment of his cracking voice. "You're welcome…"

Mabel stared on at her cup in hand before looking back up at Ryland, who didn't notice her look as he took a sip from his cup of punch. She began to gaze at his clear face and his long locks of blonde hair as it hung down the side of his ear. The build of his upper body and how the shape bled through his brown jacket and white T-shirt. The longer she stared at him, the warmer she felt her face getting.

_Uh-oh._

She quickly got up from her seat and held her cup out to Ryland. "Ryland, would you please hold onto this for a second?" she asked with a nervous, red-faced smile. "I gotta use the little girl's room…"

"Uh...sure," Ryland nodded as he took the cup from her in his open hand.

"Be right back!" Mabel called back as she immediately began making a sprint for the bathroom, gathering looks of concern from everyone due to how fast she was going.

At this point, Mabel knew for certain that this was different. For potentially the first time ever, she's been struck by feelings so strong for a guy that she actually found her nervous stomach hanging on the edge. With any other guys, she's confident, bold, and outgoing. But this ordinary guy with slightly longer hair than most guys would let grow out had her rushing to the bathroom because she was nervous.

 _What the heck happened to you, Mabel?_  She thought to herself as she kept running through the crowd of partygoers, trying to make her way to the bathroom as quickly as she could.

* * *

"What on Earth are Cheese Boodles?" Ford asked as he stood beside the snack table, examining a single Cheese Boodle puff in his fingers. "Are these the modern version of cheese puffs?"

"Gee, I dunno. Do they look like them?" Stan asked sarcastically as he watched Ford put the puff in his mouth.

Ford immediately began coughing and gagging as he ate it. Though not wanting to be rude, he still went along and swallowed it despite not enjoying its taste, eye twitching as he processed it. "God, that's the farthest from cheese that I've ever tasted."

"Please. Have you forgotten the mac and cheese that mom used to make?" Stan asked him, trying to bring up the fact that the Cheese Boodle couldn't have possibly been worse.

"You know, I think I'm starting to accept that most of these modern day snacks aren't for me," Ford admitted before taking a sip of Pitt Cola, trying to drown out the Cheese Boodle aftertaste in his mouth. "I mean Cheese Boodles? Corncornos? Chipackerz?" he named as he examined the snacks set up at the table. "I mean, whatever happened to simpler snacks like ham and cheese on a toothpick? Or how about jelly beans? C'mon, the kids these days still eat jelly beans, right?"

"Honestly, after seeing what they did to the Juke Joint, I've accepted that we live in a new world, Sixer. And it ain't for us anymore," Stan stated as he took a sip from his own can of Pitt Cola.

"Oh, please. Certainly there's something still around here for us," Ford said, denying Stan's claim.

"Maybe. I don't know," Stan admitted with a shrug. "Mabel probably knows best about what's 'in' and what 'isn't' nowadays. Maybe ask her."

"I suppose it'd be an interesting answer," Ford nodded as she looked around the room for her. "Where has she gone anyway? It's been a good while since she went with her friends."

Stan turned his head a little and quickly caught sight of Mabel quickly making her way over in their direction. "Ah, there she is," he pointed her out to Ford as he waved over at her. "Where have you been, pumpkin? You haven't been talking to boys, have ya?" he said jokingly with a very clear smile on his face.

However, Mabel was in no state of mind to process the joke or even acknowledge them, as she simply sprinted right past them and through the door next to them. Stan and Ford were left on their own yet again, confused as to what was wrong with their great-niece and what prompted her to completely run past them.

"So, uh, does that mean she's talking to boys?" Stan asked, not sure at that moment whether she had ignored them or not. "I meant it as a joke, but uh, that looked kinda serious."

"I don't even think she acknowledged us," Ford assumed as he looked at the door she had zoomed through. "Honestly, Stanley, I do hope the kids remember their commitment. As fine as I am with them mingling around and doing their own things, I do hope they pay us enough attention so we don't let a day we could've spent working go to waste."

"Relax, Ford. Ain't none of us being forgotten yet," Stan said, putting a hand on his brother's shoulder assuringly. "Maybe she's just sick or something. She looked kinda pale. There's no need to jump to conclusions like 'She's not acknowledging us,' or 'The kids forgot about us'. Everything's fine so far, Sixer. Relax."

"Hey Grunkle Stan! Hey Great Uncle Ford!" Dipper's voice was heard as he and Derrick stepped up to the two.

Stan glanced back at Ford after seeing Dipper approach them. "See? Told ya!"

"Sorry, I'm late," Dipper said as he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "I was busy...uh... _cleaning up_."

Ford chuckled as he looked upon Dipper. "Ah, you're alright, Dipper. We're just glad to see you." His eyes then glanced upon Derrick, who appeared to have a fixed gaze on his great-nephew that he didn't even appear to notice. He raised an eyebrow as he noticed just how intimate the stare was. "And...uh...is this your friend? The...fellow that was with us last night?"

Dipper looked over at Derrick, who quickly cleared his gaze and started looking around normally again. "Oh yeah, this is my best bud, Derrick, from back home in Piedmont. Also known as the guy who nearly got himself killed due to screaming during an attempted surprise attack."

Derrick took a quick second to process this comment before breaking out laughing as if Dipper had told the funniest joke in the world. Not even ironically either. "Good one, Dipper! You're such a riot, man!"

"Uhh, that...wasn't...really a joke," Dipper clarified, raising an eyebrow at Derrick's strange response. "But, uh, hey! I guess I'm a riot?"

"Hell yeah, you are!" Derrick said as he continued laughing, which seemed to increasingly provide a level of discomfort for Dipper.

Stan and Ford stared on at Derrick, unsure what to make of him based on his introduction. Dipper claimed he was his best friend, but Derrick's behavior seemed to imply something different. Not that either Stan or Ford had any particular opinions on it, but it was certainly a surprise if what they thought was happening was actually happening.

"So... _best friend_ , huh?" Stan questioned Dipper in a skeptical tone.

"Yep! Been the best of bros since the eighth grade!" Derrick said as he wrapped his arm around Dipper's neck.

"' _The best of bros?'_ " Dipper restated questionably, finding that to be a term Derrick has never used before and almost completely out of character for him. Sure, they were 'bros' in a friendly sense, but Derrick was never one to put it out in such a blunt, outgoing way. Normally, he'd say something more lowkey like ' _Yeah, we've been friends for a few years_ ,' or ' _Yeah, I've been defending his ass for awhile now_.' But ' _The best of bros?'_  That was an odd one.

And while he had been used to the occasional noogie or brotherly arm around the neck, Derrick's grasp this time felt like he had brought him a little closer than normal. Close enough that Dipper was beginning to find it a little  _too_  close for comfort.

"Dipper's about to be a senior. So four years, huh?" Ford added up. "So that means you both met not long after you and Mabel went back home? At least that's what I assume. I don't recall you ever mentioning a Derrick fellow before."

"Correct," Dipper nodded as he placed his hands on Derrick's arm and casually took it off of his neck as his discomfort of being so close to him finally got to him. "We can catch up more on that in a moment," he told them as he began to walk away. "I think I'm gonna go grab some Pitt Cola or something."

"I'll come with," Derrick offered, taking a few steps along.

"Uh, no need!" Dipper quickly rejected, shaking his hands but also maintaining an understanding smile. "Just stay with my uncles. I'll be quick."

"Alright," Derrick accepted, though slightly disappointed.

As Dipper walked off to get a drink, the scent of his cologne blew into Stan and Ford, and they both processed it. Stan caught the smell but didn't think much of it. Ford, however, caught the smell and did have a moment where he felt a sense of similarity.

"Hmm, that's odd," Ford said as he tried to analyze the scent.

"What's wrong?" Stan asked.

"That scent."

Stan gave the air a whiff, beginning to focus on his nose. "What? Someone sprayed cologne or something?"

"Yes, but that cologne smells oddly familiar," Ford told him as he continued to process the scent, trying to trace what he associated it with. " _Very_  oddly familiar…"

* * *

Dipper had to walk across the floor room to get to the drink table. The dance floor was full of dancing partygoers and couples, but he stuck to the sidelines, making sure to go around and not interfere with anyone's partying mood.

However, his environment began to go against his intentions. There was a group of friends hanging out beside the wall, socializing and making jokes. As a joke, one of the guys facing the girls against the wall began making some weird mock dance, throwing his arms from side to side while walking backward. He did this very suddenly and managed to bump straight into Dipper, which then sent him bumping into someone else on the dance floor.

The guy who bumped into Dipper turned around and gave him a quick acknowledgment. "Sorry, dude," he told him before turning right back to his friends, laughing away. Dipper gave him an irritated look due to his quick and insincere apology.

"My top!" a girl shouted in distress.

Dipper's irritation didn't last long as he turned back behind him to see the brown-haired girl that he had bumped into. In her hand, she held a cup of a little bit of punch. Looking up at her appearance though, he quickly noticed the giant red stain in the middle of her bright blue top. Knowing that he had unintentionally caused this, he began to freak out himself.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry!" he said, walking a few steps toward her as he placed his hands on his head in panic.

"You bumped into me!" the girl pointed him out, narrowing her eyes.

"I-I didn't mean to!" Dipper defended. "It was an accident! I was just walking and then this guy right behind me bumped right into me and then I bumped right into you!"

As Dipper was trying to explain himself to the girl, his close proximity allowed the scent of the cologne to reach her nose. As she inhaled and processed the scent, she froze and her eyes bulged. Then, a pink flash of sparkles quickly shined within her eyes before dissipating and going back to normal again.

As she came to her senses again, she looked at Dipper and found that her annoyance for him had suddenly disappeared. Now she found herself beginning to grow smitten by him, beginning to smile the more he went on.

"It's okay," she told him with content as she stared on at him.

Dipper caught her smile as he went on and began to grow slightly confused, while his initial feelings of panic kept intact. "You...you aren't mad?"

She giggled, which seemed to shock and confuse him further. "No, I'm not mad, silly! Why would I be mad?"

"Well, I mean, I did just ruin your top…" he reminded her, glancing back and forth between her face and the very large and obvious stain. "I mean, that's a really bad stain...and it's probably gonna take more than just detergent to get that off…"

She burst out laughing at this, which continued to further Dipper's utter confusion. "You're funny!"

"Uh...thanks, but, seriously, that stain is bad," he quickly replied, trying to get her focus back to the situation at hand.

"Well, how about you just make it up to me by getting me a new cup of punch and then saving me a dance?" she suggested as she batted her eyes flirtatiously at him.

"Well, I...wait,  _what?_ " Dipper questioned as he processed her claim, his face beginning to redden.

"Ya know. Since it  _is_ your fault and all," the girl added, as she gave him a playful nudge with her elbow. "It's the least you could do."

"I-I...I mean...uh…" Dipper mumbled flusteredly, trying to get his brain to work. A girl just asked him to get her punch and then  _save her a dance_. Now he needed to remember how to put words together. "S-sure! Yeah! I'll...I'll go do that!"

Without even hesitating, he made a bolt for the drink table. Within the span of a mere minute, he had gone from pissing off a girl to somehow making that same girl want to dance with him. Never has something like that happened before in his life.

Spilling a drink on a girl's top never warranted him a dance. Usually, a confrontation like that ended with a slap in the face. Or a drink to the face. Or both.

Should he be worried about how sudden her reaction changed? For her to suddenly not care about a giant stain on her possibly expensive top? Perhaps she wasn't the brightest person he could've bumped into. Maybe he should take this as a red flag. Seriously. Who brushes off a stain  _that bad?_

He probably should've taken it as a red flag, but the same way she brushed the stain off, he brushed this weirdness off. He reached the drink table and grabbed a cup, to which someone else took a cup right after.

He looked up and saw that it was Wendy, who looked back at him and smiled.

"Hey Dipper!" she greeted.

"Oh, hey, Wendy," Dipper greeted back.

"Crazy party, huh? Amazing your sister put this all together in a single night. Over half of this junk wasn't even here yesterday," she told him as she looked around the place.

"Y-yeah!" Dipper stuttered, still flustered over his current situation. "She's great at doing the unordinary!"

"Right? Crazy little psycho," she agreed with a chuckle. "I just came to grab some punch. I'm dying in that corner over there," she said as she fanned herself with her open hand.

"Oh, yeah, I'm grabbing punch too," Dipper replied, glancing between her and the bowl.

"Go ahead then, man," Wendy said, gesturing him to go for the bowl. "You got here like a second before I did."

"T-thanks," he stuttered again as he aimed for the ladle in the punch bowl. He then proceeded to shakily pour some punch into his cup, while also making a bit of a mess in the process due to how anxious he was. He was so anxious that his focus on how much punch he was pouring into the cup began to disappear.

"Woah, man. You might wanna take it easy there?" Wendy suggested, watching as he began overfilling his cup and make an even bigger mess on the table.

Realizing the mess he was making, Dipper quickly dropped the ladle and backed up a bit. He groaned at the mess, growing embarrassed with himself and how anxious he had gotten.

"Oh, God! What am I doing?" Dipper asked himself as he examined the spills.

"Dude, are you alright?" Wendy asked, placing her cup down as she examined his distressed look. "You're sweating bullets and look like you're gonna hurl. Though it's the hurling part I'm a little more concerned about right now," she said as she took a step back as a precaution.

"I'm...kinda freaking out about something that just happened to me," Dipper reluctantly revealed to her.

"Oh, man," Wendy said with a chuckle as she crossed her arms, interested. "That's so vague that now you gotta tell me."

"No, no," Dipper refused, face reddening at the idea of telling Wendy, of all people, about his predicament. "It's not something you wanna know…"

" _Tell me! Tell me!_ " she chanted in a mock deep voice while throwing her fists up and down repeatedly.

He didn't really want to, but at the same time, he felt he could really use someone to express himself to at that moment before he went and potentially make a fool of himself. Even though Wendy wouldn't be his first option for these types of talks, she was still a close friend and was cool enough to understand him anyway.

He sighed as he prepared to explain. "I was just making my way over here to the drink table before some guy bumped into me, which then made me bump into this girl and spill punch all over her top."

"Oh man!" Wendy said as she tried to hide her laugh.

"Yeah…" Dipper said as he rubbed his shoulder awkwardly. "Anyway, I apologized to her, but then she started acting weird and…"

Dipper continued explaining what had happened with the girl to Wendy, who kept her focus on what he was saying. As he went on, she began to catch the scent of his cologne, to which she quickly froze as her eyes flashed with pink sparkles for a brief second. She lost a bit of focus for a second as she felt somewhat dizzy, placing her hand on her head as she felt something happening to her.

As her feelings of dizziness went away, she then looked back up at Dipper, who was still explaining his situation. Almost as if nothing had happened, she continued to listen intently to what he was telling her regarding the girl, but she found herself paying more attention to his appearance, admiring what she was looking at.

"...and so that's when I went to grab her some punch. Now, here I am," Dipper finished, making a gesture to his current position.

"I see…" Wendy nodded understandingly as she looked back up at him.

"Yeah, and so, you know, I don't really have a lot of experience with girls…" Dipper said as he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly again. "And so I'm kinda worried that when I go back, I'm just gonna embarrass myself or scare her off or...just be a Dipper. I don't know. You have anything to say, or like...advice or something? If that's not weird to ask?"

"Nah man, it's not weird," Wendy assured him with a smile. "It just sounds like you're being hard on yourself. Like, 'being a Dipper?' What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know," Dipper admitted as he thought about it. "Being a sweaty, mumbling nerd who still doesn't know how to talk to girls after all this time?"

"You're talking to one right now!" Wendy chuckled as she playfully punched him in the arm, which got a slight smile out of him. "And that's not what being a Dipper is. Being a Dipper is being a kind, sweet, and smart guy who always puts others before himself. A guy with a big heart."

Dipper smiled warmly as he rubbed his arm. "You really think that?"

"Of course I do!" Wendy said assuringly. She then began to play with her hair, brushing it down with her hands as she looked to the side. "And I don't know if I'm just going crazy, but it feels like there's something a bit more different about you than normal."

"Well, I mean, I'm kinda sweating a lot...and why am I saying that?" Dipper said, beating his forehead with the palm of his fist lightly as he caught his unnecessary words.

Wendy laughed at this though. "No, man, that's not what I meant," she said with a smile. "I don't know if I should be saying this since you're already caught up with someone else, but you look... _cuter_  than normal."

Dipper stared at her blankly for a solid moment, completely stunned. " _...what?_ "

Wendy's face began to redden herself. "Like it feels like I've been looking at you one way all this time, but now I'm looking at you another way. A better way. I don't know, is that weird?"

" _...what?_ "

"You know, you're grown up now," Wendy said as she examined him. "You're going to be seventeen by the end of the summer and I'm nineteen. Maybe when I turned you down that one time, it was because it would've been weird. Like a fifteen-year-old and a thirteen-year-old. But, there isn't  _as much_  a difference between a nineteen-year-old and a near-seventeen-year-old..." she said suggestively. "Maybe if you're still into the idea after all this time, we could actually give it a shot, now that you're older?"

Dipper's mouth hung open in absolute shock as she suggested this. He couldn't fathom the fact that this was actually happening.

Wendy  _flippin'_  Corduroy just asked him out.

There was no way this was real. It couldn't have been. He refused to believe it.

"Alright, what the hell is this?" he said as he looked around the room, eyes narrowed. "This is a trick, right?"

"What?" Wendy asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

"Am I still in Mabel's dream bubble or something? Has Bill actually won? Has the past four years of my life all been a lie?! Is  _any_ of this real?!" Dipper asked, recalling the time in Mabel's bubble where he had been similarly duped by Bill's tricks, trying to pull him into his desires at the time. "Are you going to offer your hand only for it to turn into a bunch of roaches and fall off?!"

Wendy stared at him for a moment, glancing around in confusion. Then she gave him a daring look as she walked up to him and grabbed him by the hand, placing her fingers between his. This stunned Dipper once again, catching him by total surprise while also being something he couldn't imagine ever happening to him.

"Does that feel like a bunch of roaches to you?" Wendy asked as she held up their joined hands together in front of him.

"I...I…" Dipper stuttered as he stared blankly at her again, having no idea what to say anymore.

Wendy chuckled at his stuttering before simply pulling him along with her as she walked onto the dance floor with all the other partygoers. "C'mon. I love this song and I'm gonna be ticked if you don't dance with me."

"...I...I...I…" Dipper continued to stutter mindlessly, as he simply let Wendy drag him out. He felt limp and numb. Like everything inside him at that moment had completely stopped working. He didn't know what to make of anything, and even if he did, he couldn't. Not that that made any sense at all, but that's how he generally felt at that moment. That nothing was making any sense.

Yet all he could do was go along with it.

As she dragged him onto the dance floor, he went past several partygoers at a close proximity. The trail of air that followed his movement contained hints of his cologne, and it brushed the noses of each guest that he passed. Those who smelt it were affected, their eyes quickly flashing with pink sparkles.

They weren't able to catch up fast enough on the fact that the scent came from Dipper and so they simply began looking around in confusion, having no idea what had just happened to them. As they looked around, some caught sight of Dipper as Wendy held his hand and then threw him onto the dance floor right in front of her. Seeing as how he was her possession at that moment, none of them really bothered intruding, but some certainly watched or continued to do their own things while also keeping an eye on him, as there was something about him at that moment that seemed to click with them in their heads all of the sudden.

Having brought Dipper to the middle of the dance floor with her, Wendy began enthusiastically dancing along to the upbeat music thumping through the stereo. Dipper still stood completely shocked and mouth agape. He still couldn't believe what was happening right now and felt as though it was all some twisted prank in some way. But the look in Wendy's eye continued to imply otherwise.

"Come on, man!" Wendy persuaded, bumping her hip into his torso mid-dance, which pushed him back a little. "You gonna dance with me or what?"

Dipper looked around and noticed the eyes of a few other partygoers looking his way as he just stood there, standing like an idiot in front a girl who was trying to get him to dance. His former crush at that.

Despite all the confused feelings and thoughts going through his head at that moment, he knew he couldn't just keep standing there in front of her. So he slowly began to warm himself up to dancing as well, putting on a light, yet flustered smile as he did so. He wasn't much of a dancer even in a casual party-sense, so it took another case of breaking from his comfort zone to do so.

Wendy seemed to approve regardless of his skills though. "There you go, man!" Now you got it!" she supported admiringly.

Dipper chuckled blushingly, still maintaining confused feelings. But with Wendy's support, he found himself growing a bit more comfortable and less stiff every second that passed. He knew he had danced alongside her before, and so in order to keep his cool, he tried to tune out the current circumstances and just try to pretend like things weren't too different between them. Aside from holding hands a moment ago, there was no physical contact in place. It was an upbeat song, and there was no reason to get too intimate right now. In his head, he tried to picture themselves as nothing more than just two close friends dancing next to one another.

Feelings could be worried about later.

* * *

"Ya know, that kid sure takes his time when getting a can of soda," Stan said as he thought about how long Dipper was taking on getting his drink.

"Dipper takes his time to do a lot of things," Derrick told him as he stood beside the two. "It's why he's great at what he does."

"Kid can be great and grab a soda in less than a minute," Stan countered.

"I don't believe it," Ford said as he stared off into the crowd of people on the dance floor in shock.

"C'mon, Ford. The kid has his flaws, but even  _I_ figured you'd think he's smart enough to grab a drink quickly," Stan said, not catching what Ford was looking at.

"No, Stanley," Ford said as he pointed out into the crowd for Stan to see, with Derrick looking on as well. "Look."

It took a moment, but soon Stan was able to see that in the middle of the dance floor through a bunch of other partygoers, Dipper was dancing next to Wendy. The two were laughing and looking like they were enjoying themselves, which was good for them.

But for the two Stan brothers, this felt like a betrayal.

"I can't believe it," Ford stated as they watched the two.

"What's that redhead doing with Dipper?" Derrick asked with a look of irritation and jealousy. "I thought he said she rejected him!"

"And I thought she had standards," Stan added, a little weirded out by the same fact that Wendy was with Dipper.

"Stan, our great nephew just ditched us," Ford pointed out for him. " _Us_. His own family that he hasn't seen for four years until yesterday. For a girl that he's already had over two weeks to reunite with."

"He probably got caught up in the moment," Stan tried to justify. "Taking an opportunity and rolling with it, right?"

"That's exactly what I was worried about, Stanley!" Ford reminded him, getting a little irritated. "The kids completely getting caught up in their own business up to the point where they completely forget about us. Forgetting the whole reason this party was thrown in the first place! We didn't come here to get ignored! If I knew this was how things were going to turn out, I would've held my ground earlier and kept pushing for the party to be called off!"

"Calm down, Ford!" Stan tried to coax. "Look, I can see where you're coming from here. I'm disappointed too. But, c'mon. Just because Dipper forgot about us doesn't mean that Mabel has! I'm sure as soon as she gets back from whatever she's doing, she'll come straight to us."

At that moment, Mabel had emerged from the doorway leading into the bathroom hallway and exhaled, as if she was trying to convince herself to keep it together. As soon as she did that, she turned in the Stans' direction and quickly began rushing up to them.

Stan caught this and pointed her out to Ford confidently. "Ya see? Here she comes now."

Mabel reached the two, but instead of standing beside them, she squeezed herself between the two. "'Scuse me, Grunkle Stan!" she said dismissively before continuing on her way.

Stan's smile immediately diminished as he and Ford watched her skip her way back to the couch across the room. There, she rejoined her friends and sat back on her end of the couch next to Ryland. He smiled at her and handed her drink back.

"You alright?" Ryland asked her, raising an eyebrow in slight concern based on how quickly he saw her run before.

"Oh yeah!" Mabel assured him confidently. "Just normal business. I  _totally_ didn't just get so nervous that I had to puke. Nope! This girl is all good!"

"Well, that's good to hear," Ryland said with a smile.

"Yes. Yes, it is," Mabel said as she rested her head on the back of her hand, leaning herself a little closer to Ryland as she looked on at him with a flirtatious smile.

Stan and Ford continued to watch the two socialize and laugh with one another, focusing their sights on Mabel, who didn't pay them any looks or mind. She had just squeezed right past them while giving them hardly any acknowledgment.

Both her and Dipper had promised to stick with the two and not leave their side throughout the night, claiming they wouldn't get caught up in distractions. Yet here they both were, getting caught up in what looked to Stan and Ford as their own romantic pursuits. Caught up in romance rather than spending time with their own family after all this time they've spent apart.

"Ah, who am I kiddin'? You were right, Ford," Stan admitted and he slouched sadly as he came to accept things as they were. "The kids ain't kids anymore. They're teenagers. And this what teenagers do."

Ford placed a hand on Stan's back empathetically, also displaying a look of sadness and disappointment too. "Come on. Let's just head back to the lab and get started on this whole Bill thing."

Stan looked hesitant for a second but then nodded in agreement. Dipper and Mabel were doing their own things now and had forgotten about them. There was no use for them there anymore. It was time to accept that and go back and work on what was really important at that moment.

The two proceeded to head for the door behind them, unnoticed by Derrick, who held up his look of jealousy on Dipper and Wendy as the two danced, even paying absolutely no attention to the separate conversation between the Stans.

However, Soos took notice of their departure and managed to glance over at them from his DJ Booth just as they began to head out.

"Huh?" he asked as he spotted them.

Melody caught his voice as she handled equipment behind him and turned to him. "What's wrong, Soos?"

"Watch the booth for one sec, Melody," Soos told her as he put his headphones down and quickly stepped out from behind the booth to make his way over to the Stan brothers across the room. Melody was slightly caught off-guard by the sudden job she was given but still accepted her position.

As Soos ran, he saw that Ford had already exited through the door. Stan was right behind him and was preparing to step out as well.

"Mr. Pines!" Soos called out. "Mr. Pines, wait!"

Stan heard Soos's voice just as he was about to step out of the floor room and turned to him as he approached, panting out of exhaustion from his run.

"What is it, Soos?" Stan asked.

"Where...where are you two going?" Soos asked through his panting.

"Ford and I decided to just head back to the basement. There's nothing for us here," Stan simply told him as he turned back around to head inside.

However, Soos put his hand on his shoulder and turned him back around. "But, what about the party? You dudes are, like, supposed to be the guests of honor here!"

"Yeah, you wanna remind both Mr. and Ms. Infatuation about that?" Stan asked, narrowing his eyes.

"What?"

"The kids," Stan said pointing his finger over at Mabel on the couch with Ryland and then aiming over at Dipper with Wendy on the dance floor. "They're in their own little worlds right now. Focused on their own romantic endeavors. Which would be fine, if they didn't promise Ford and I that they'd be spending time with  _us_ at this party." He sighed, placing a hand on his face for a second out of disappointment. "Not to sound grouchier than usual, Soos, but we were promised one thing and we ain't getting it. So why bother? At least now I can spend time separating myself from this demon in my head."

He proceeded head back to the doorway again, to which Soos stretched his arm out hopelessly. "But...Mr. Pines…"

"Just enjoy the party, Soos. I didn't say I was stoppin' ya," Stan said sadly as he walked out the door, leaving the party and letting the door shut behind him.

Soos stared at the door dejectedly for a moment before turning back to the party. He glanced back over at the couch where Mabel sat and watched as she giggled at something that Ryland had said, playfully pushing him on the shoulder. His glance then turned over to Dipper and Wendy in the middle of the dance floor, watching as the two locked eye contact with one another as they danced separately from one another, though, Dipper displayed less of a flirty expression compared to Wendy. As he processed the twins' separate endeavors, he sighed and placed a hand on his head in distress.

"Oh, man…"

* * *

"No, Marius!  _I'm_ sorry! I shouldn't have been so upset about you canceling our Pony Heist movie date!"

Grenda was speaking apologetically over the phone to her boyfriend, Marius von Fundshauser. Realizing her fault for their latest argument, she had decided to call him up and make amends with him and their relationship privately, standing away from the couch where the rest of her friends sat.

"It's just...you're joining the army! How am I supposed to feel about…?" She waited as Marius had cut her off. As he spoke, she began to smile, her guilt now turning into joy. "Really?! You can set up a private screening at your castle?!"

She began to walk even further away from the couch so she could deal with her phone call away from the party. On her former end of the couch, Evan had casually taken the spot beside Candy, leaving a fair amount of distance between the two. Candy was focused on a conversation between her, Mabel, and Ryland. Evan was more focused on her, however, and kept giving her nervous glances.

He had not much idea what he was feeling at that moment. Outside of school and other academic-related programs and activities, he rarely ventured outside his house and computer. He hated most parties and general social gatherings, including this one, as opposed to his brother, who loved them. But even when he had to communicate with others, he was able to normally and without issue.

Being twelve-years-old, never has he come across anyone in his life that made him feel the way Candy currently made him feel. Whatever it was.

A crush, his older brother had mentioned to him when they had gone to get punch for the girls. He's heard of the concept behind crushes and general romantic feelings, but  _he's_ never had them. Nor has he ever wanted to. Yet here he was, sweating and shaking over someone he's never known before in his life until mere minutes ago. And his feelings of hate for coming to the party had suddenly dissipated too.

 _What's happening to me?_  he thought to himself as he looked down at his shaking hands.

None of the teens were looking at him. But, that was fine. He only wanted to draw Candy's attention. He felt the urge to talk to her. He didn't know or really even care about what, he just did.

He gulped nervously as he tried to figure out a way to get her attention. He then decided on the most direct way. He leaned forward and tapped on her shoulder.

Candy felt the tap and turned her head to find Evan, who froze with his outstretched arm as he saw her turn to see him. She didn't think too much of it, however, and simply smiled kindly as she gave her complete focus to him. Mabel and Ryland simply went on with their conversation, not paying attention to Candy shifting her attention away.

"Oh, hello," she greeted as she faced him.

Evan still sat frozen with his arm outstretched, his face reddening. He soon snapped himself out of it, shaking his head and retracting his arm. "Uhh...hi…"

"Evan, correct?" Candy questioned, recalling his earlier introduction.

"Who's Evan? I MEAN... _YES!_  Correct!" Evan frantically corrected himself upon realizing his mistake. "Evan's my name! That is my name! Evan!  _Yep!_  I know what my name is!"

"Uh...okay…" Candy replied in a somewhat confused tone due to his frantic behavior.

Ryland's eye glanced over at Evan while he was talking with Mabel and caught on to what he was trying to do. "Oh God, what is he doing?" he said under his breath, though audible enough for Mabel to hear.

"What's happening?" Mabel asked quietly as she turned around to look at the two.

"Lil' bro's got a lil' crush," Ryland said with a smirk.

Mabel gasped. "On Candy?" she whispered, which Ryland nodded in response to. "Aww! That's adorable! And also,  _kinda_ weird. He knows that she's fifteen, right?"

"Well, you see...I don't think he's ever  _had_ a crush before," Ryland explained to her. "And I think that's about to show in a second here."

Evan then cleared his throat as he came up with the closest thing to small talk that he could think of.

"So, what's your favorite type of math?"

That question immediately put Mabel on the brink of cringing. "Oh. My. God."

"Um, excuse me?" Candy asked in utter confusion, having no idea what prompted this question.

"You know...Statistics, Trigonometry, AP Calculus AB, AP Calculus BC...like, what's your favorite?" Evan asked.

"I...uh…" Candy said as she continued to process the question, still finding it one of the oddest questions she had ever been suddenly asked to answer. Ignoring the weirdness of the question, she took a minute to give it a bit of actual thought. "Well, I do like…"

"ME TOO!" Evan exclaimed suddenly, cutting her off before she could even answer.

"Wait, what?" Candy asked, confusion increasing.

"I love AP Calculus BC!" Evan exclaimed excitedly. "People say that BC is terrible and that AB is way easier because it has fewer topics, but like, I find more excitement in the topics that BC brings! It's so challenging and I love it! Don't you agree?"

"Um...you didn't even let me answer the ques…"

"Yeah, I knew you'd agree!" Evan cut off yet again, his nervousness getting the best of him and having no awareness of his brash behavior. "Look at us! Look how much we have in common! Man, we're hitting it off, aren't we?"

" _Hitting it off?_ " Candy asked, now horrified once she realized what was truly going on.

"Yep, we sure are!" Evan said confidently, still unaware of himself or her current look of horror. His eyes then glanced down at her empty cup in hand, which prompted him to shoot out of his seat in slight panic. "WOAH! Your drink's empty! Let me fill that for you!"

Without hesitation, he swiped the empty cup from her hand and began sprinting his way over to the drink table, leaving her completely appalled as to what had just happened. A moment after he left, she finally turned to Mabel and Ryland, both who looked at her sympathetically, well aware of what she has just faced.

"I am going to look for Grenda. She knows how to hide me," she told them as she simply stood up from the couch and began casually walking away.

Mabel sighed as Candy walked off. "Poor Candy. Now she's a Wendy with a Dipper on her case."

"Pfft, what?" Ryland questioned with a chuckle, unsure of what she meant. "What's that mean?"

"Oh, this just reminds me of the time Dipper had an obsessive crush on Wendy when  _he_ was twelve and  _she_ was fifteen," Mabel told him.

"No way. Dipper had a thing for Wendy?" Ryland asked, thinking about it.

"Yep! The age gap never let it get anywhere though," Mabel added. "Something poor Evan's gonna have to learn at some point too."

"Hey, maybe they could work it out when they're older, ya know?" Ryland suggested as he raised his cup of punch to his mouth. "I mean, our mom's like six years younger than our dad, but they went out when they were both in their twenties. At that point in their lives, an age gap like that doesn't mean too much."

"I guess you're right," Mabel claimed as she thought about it. "If they work out a good friendship, then yeah! Maybe it can happen for Candy and Evan too when they're both older. Maybe even Dipper and Wendy."

"Actually…" Ryland said as he looked out into the crowd on the dance floor and noticed a pair that stood out. "...maybe it's going on for them  _now_."

"Huh?"

"Check it out," Ryland said as he pointed out Dipper and Wendy in the crowd of people on the dance floor to her.

The two were dancing to the music and enjoying themselves, even sharing a few laughs. Though they weren't making any physical contact, they appeared to be dancing in a noticeably close proximity of one another. Something that Mabel even noticed was the way that Wendy had looked at him, which stood out to her as particularly flirty.

"You could say that maybe they're dancing as friends, but I don't know," Ryland said as he watched them. "I think there's something going on over there."

"She's definitely... _looking_  at him differently," Mabel said as she examined the two, definitely getting a 'more-than-just-friends' vibe as well.

Normally, she would be excited about her brother potentially finding someone, especially in his old crush. But now, she was a bit more skeptical than anything else. Going back to the pep talk she had given him earlier about cleaning himself up, he looked practically no different here. The only thing she figured he could've done was take a shower, but even then, he and Wendy had spoken at other points in the summer. What was so enticing about him to her at that moment?

"Don't you think it's a little odd how she finds him appealing all of the sudden?" Mabel voiced her skepticism aloud. "I don't know. I mean, she rejected him last time we were here. Now she's the one getting all close. But she never seemed that way before today."

"Maybe it's just natural progression," Ryland told her. "Like, sure. Maybe there was nothing before, but now that they're both older and things are little less weird, there's a spark there that wasn't seen before. Something they let grow over time. Over age." He shrugged as he got up from the arm of the couch. "Or at least that's just what I think. All I know is that no one likes a forced relationship. If Wendy didn't like that four years ago, then she's let time pass so their friendship and everything could settle in. Now look at them. Best to just let nature take its stroll and let things naturally happen as they do." He then proceeded to start walking away from the couch, looking back at her once as a heads up. "I'm gonna go use the bathroom."

Mabel nodded at him, watching as he turned back and walked away. She thought for a moment about what he had just said about relationships and took things into perspective.

_'All I know is that no one likes a forced relationship...'_

He doesn't like forced relationships. Which is exactly what she was afraid of doing again. She has been trying to stow away from forcing anything between them and just let them develop naturally. So she probably couldn't blurt out her feelings or come off too strong to the point where she'd push him away. She needed to let the forces of nature bring them together. But now, she began to wonder how she could manipulate the forces of nature to bring them together instead.

"Natural progression, eh?" Mabel said as she thought of different ideas, eventually coming up with one that sparked her interest.

"Hey, hambone."

Mabel's thought process was interrupted as she glanced in front of her to see Soos approaching her. Realizing her new idea connected to him, she quickly jumped up from her seat and ran up to him.

"Soos! I was just thinking about you! I need you to do me a huge favor!" Mabel let him in on.

"Oh...uh, sure," Soos nodded acceptingly as he rubbed the back of his head. "What do you need?"

"Ryland just went to the bathroom," Mabel explained, pointing off in the direction Ryland had walked in. "When he comes back, can you play one of those 80's slow jams at your DJ booth?"

Soos thought over the favor for a second before frowning, beginning to rub his shoulder hesitantly. "You see, dude, I was actually just coming over here to talk to you about that."

"Talk about what?" Mabel asked before her eyes bulged as she made an assumption. " _Me and Ryland?!_   _W-what?!_  That's...that's craz...okay, I admit it! I'm guilty. I may have a teeny, weeny thing for him and that may or may not be the reason I'm asking you this favor."

"Well, I mean...that wasn't really what I meant…" Soos clarified for her, still rubbing his shoulder hesitantly.

"Wait...you think me having a crush on one of your employees is bad for the Shack, huh?" Mabel assumed once again. "That I'll distract him and take away from the business, or I shouldn't be like Dipper and fall for and get my heart broken by someone who works here, right?"

"What?! No...dude, I have no problems with you having a thing for Ryland," Soos told her. "I just don't think Ryland should be a focus of yours today."

"What do you mean?" she asked, not understanding his point.

"Like, have you forgotten why you decided to throw this party?" Soos asked, gesturing toward the rest of the room. "I'm afraid you might be letting this whole crush of yours get in the way of what's supposed to be really important, dude."

"Well, what's really important right now is that I don't miss my chance at trying to naturally progress my relationship with Ryland!" Mabel said, not putting too much thought into what Soos was trying to tell her. "Candy and Grenda already told me. I only have the summer to start a relationship with him before things go into long-distance. I want to cherish whatever time I can get with him in person before then."

Soos sighed, realizing he wasn't getting to her. "Look dawg. I see you really care about this, so I'll do that favor for you. But you should really think about what you're doing here. Why you originally threw this party and all." He began walking away to head back to his position. "And if you don't, well, you're young. You'll figure it out soon enough."

"Thanks, Soos!" Mabel called out to him as he walked away while not really sure what to make of those final statements he made.

* * *

"You see, and that's another thing I've started to hate about you!" Tambry shouted frustratedly as she got up in Robbie's face. "You're always so arrogant!"

"Arrogant?!" Robbie questioned. "Uh, news flash! No one reads those paragraph-long status updates you spend hours writing! Social media is for quick looks at pictures and brief funny videos! Not for long essays about self-conceited morals!"

The two kept bickering back and forth with one another while Lee and Nate sat a few feet away from them, just watching in annoyance.

"Wasn't this argument originally about how Tambry found Robbie's burps disgusting?" Nate asked, trying to find the source of the current drama. "Seriously. Wasn't that how this started?"

Lee sighed and placed his face in hands out of irritation. "I honestly don't even know anymore, dude. I really don't."

At that moment, a fit man in a light green plaid shirt with his sleeves rolled up and brown cargo pants walked over to the group. In his hands, he held a large bouquet of orange flowers in his hand.

"Sorry, I'm late, peeps. Had to drop by the store real fast," he said in a deep, smooth voice, grabbing the attention of the whole group.

"About time you got here, Thompson," Nate said as he and Lee got up to greet him.

"God, I feel like I die inside every time he says 'peeps'," Robbie said, cringing in his seat.

"Oh, lay off, Robbie," Lee said as he patted Thompson on the back. "At least Thompson's got confidence."

"Yeah. More than you could ever manage," Nate nodded in agreement.

"Confidence doesn't equal being able to say things that are stupid," Robbie said with an eye roll. Unsatisfied with his statement, Tambry elbowed him in the stomach for the second time, causing him to wince in pain before giving her a vexed stare.

"Yo, are those flowers for Wendy?" Lee asked, pointing over at his flowers.

"Possibly," Thompson said with a smirk as he held the flowers up. "I got her favorites. Crossfire Tulips."

"Her favorites, huh?" Tambry asked with an amused chuckle as she texted away. "Where'd you get  _that_  from?"

"It was just something I picked up on from one of our last cemetery hangouts," Thompson explained with a smooth expression.

" _Oooooo!_ Paying attention to the details!" Nate teased as he gave Thompson a hard, brotherly slap on the back, which prompted a smile from him. "My man, Thompson!"

"Hahaha,  _ow…_ " he winced under his breath.

"So what. You're gonna ask her out finally?" Nate asked.

"Nah, these are more of a goodbye gift than anything," Thompson explained.

"Bro, c'mon! You gotta tell her how you feel soon!" Lee urged as he wrapped a brotherly arm around him. "You've cleaned up big time over the past few years, and she knows it too!"

"Yeah, you gotta take a shot before it's too late," Nate added. "Trust us, man. You got this!"

"Yeah, as long as she doesn't remember the dork he used to be," Robbie claimed with a smirk, right before Tambry yet again elbowed him in the stomach. "WOULD YOU QUIT DOING THAT?!"

The three guys stared at the two for a second, but quickly brushed it off and went back to normal.

"As we were saying, you gotta let her know soon, bro," Lee reminded him again. "Before it's too late."

"You've had this thing for her for the longest time," Nate also reminded. "You going to let that all go to waste now?"

Thompson thought for a second but then smiled confidently. "No, of course not! What am I talking about? I've waited years for this! And I'm not about to wait any longer!" He glanced around the room, looking for her within in the crowds of partygoers. "Where is she? I'm going to hand her these flowers and then I'm going to ask her to dance!"

"Well, you already missed your shot," Tambry said without looking up from her phone. "She's already with someone else on the dance floor."

" _WHAT?!_ " Thompson questioned in horror, his scream sounding raspier than the smooth voice he had been using before. At that moment, him, Lee, and Nate all turned their heads toward the dance floor, eventually spotting Wendy dancing alongside Dipper.

"Wait a sec...is that... _Dipper?!_ " Nate realized in shock as he analyzed the appearance of the guy Wendy danced with.

"What?! No way!" Robbie refused to believe as he shot up from his seat to see this for himself. As his eyes eventually spotted him, he couldn't believe it was actually happening. "That little punk! He actually did it!"

"He ain't so little anymore, Robbie," Lee told him as he looked on.

" _WHAAAAAAAT?!_ " Thompson questioned in further outrage, dropping to his knees as he also made the realization that it was Dipper.

"Tambry...you knew about this?" Lee realized as he turned to her.

"Why didn't you say anything?" Nate asked.

"First off, I just glanced up at her for, like, a second. I had no idea who it even was or if it even mattered," Tambry explained to them. "Second, it's not  _my_ fault that Thompson showed up too late, like he always does, to beat  _a kid_  to a dance with Wendy."

With this said, Thompson's horror began to shift into anger. He clenched his teeth together as his eye began to twitch. At that moment, he pulled himself back onto his feet and proceeded to angrily march a few steps toward the dance floor.

Lee and Nate quickly took notice of his body language and attitude and ran up to him placing their hands on his shoulders, pulling him back.

"Woah, Thompson! Easy man!" Nate coaxed, trying to get him to calm down. "Don't lose your cool now. There's nothing to be upset about just yet."

"Yeah, I mean, look at them!" Lee pointed out as he tried to restrain Thompson. "They aren't even touching one another. They're not so much dancing  _with_  each other, but  _next to_  each other! They're just friends!"

"Yeah, and Wendy's never even told us anything about Dipper before!" Nate added. "At least, nothing that implies she likes him like  _that_."

"She's sure giving him a look, though…" Robbie pointed out as he focused on how Wendy was looking at him.

"Not helping, Robbie!" Nate said, narrowing his eyes at him.

"Yeah, and why do you care?" Tambry asked, getting slightly irritated by Robbie's sudden interest in Wendy's interactions with Dipper.

"I don't! It's just...interesting!" Robbie admitted as he sat back down, still maintaining a look at the two.

"Interesting enough for you to care?" Tambry pushed, narrowing his eyes at him.

"Would you two shut up?" Lee commanded them as he and Nate led Thompson to a seat so he could calm down and cool off. "Look, Thompson. Just chill, alright? I'm telling you. There's nothing going on between them. Just ask her to dance when she comes back."

Thompson remained unconvinced though. While he gave into the idea of sitting down to cool off a bit, he still kept a fixed stare on the two as they danced from afar. Every single move they made, he watched.

* * *

On the dance floor, Dipper had continued dancing along with the music beside Wendy. However, he had begun to grow tired of dancing to every next stereo-thumping song. The music he was enjoying, but his noodle limbs clearly weren't made for this much activity. He decided this was probably a decent moment to take a rest or go find Derrick and his Great Uncles again.

He stopped dancing and stood in front of Wendy, making a gesture with his thumb outside of the crowd. "Alright, I think that's enough for me. I'm gonna head back."

"Aw, what? C'mon," Wendy questioned with a chuckle, yet wasn't quite satisfied with this option. As he took a step back, she grabbed for his hand and held onto his arm, pulling him back.

This immediately took Dipper by surprise, and he felt like his mind was about to break yet again. He had gotten lost in the idea that the two were just dancing alongside one another as friends that he forgot that Wendy had basically confessed to having feelings for him before. Something he still felt like he didn't have an appropriate response to, though it didn't seem to matter yet because Wendy had already taken his feelings from four years ago into account and simply took them for granted.

But, he didn't have those same feelings at that point. Truthfully, he didn't know how he felt. He was confused. Sure, if he was still twelve-years-old, he'd be jumping on this opportunity at a relationship with her. But after having spent so much time trying to get over his feelings for her and successfully doing so, having her suddenly come back to say she has a thing for him now felt like he had been punched a million times in the face. Like all that time he spent getting over her was all for nothing.

Now he didn't know what to feel about her.

But he wanted to know why she suddenly felt the way she does for him. Since it seemed like she knew her own feelings better than he did his own.

Rather than letting his mind break again, he turned to face her and gave her a look of uncertainty and curiosity. "Why?"

Wendy looked confused for a moment. "What?"

"Why now?" Dipper asked, pulling his arm from her grasp so he could focus on talking to her without letting her physical touch mess with his head. "Like, I know I'm going to be seventeen soon and stuff, but like, why...where did this come from? Yeah, feelings change over time, but I mean...I spent so long trying to forget I ever liked you after you turned me down. So like...why is this happening now? Even after Mabel and I first came back a few weeks ago. What changed? Because I don't feel different."

Wendy stood in front of him for a moment trying to think of how to respond. Then, she walked up to him, getting close to him. "I told you when I turned you down that I was just too old for you. I mean, a teen going out with a child? That's just weird. And yeah, it's still a little weird considering I'm in college now and you're still in high school, but you've always acted above your age. You're so much more mature than pretty much every guy I've ever gone out with before and over half of the other guys I've gone to college with. So maybe that alone is enough to kinda brush the weirdness of it all aside."

"But why now?" Dipper asked again. "Mabel and I have been here for over two weeks already and you've never come off like this before to me."

"I don't know," Wendy admitted as she looked to the side for a moment. "I guess I didn't really think much before. Then I saw you today and suddenly, it felt like a bunch of weird pink sparkles flashed in my eyes."

Dipper wasn't sure how to respond to this, considering this just made him even more conflicted. The more he looked at her and the more she talked, it felt like he was remembering his twelve-year-old feelings. Yet, something inside him still felt unmoved and unconvinced. Like he was still living a lie or maybe didn't reciprocate those true feelings for her anymore. He wasn't sure.

But it seemed as though she was, as she shut her eyes and began to lean her face closer to his.

* * *

That was a movement that Thompson had immediately noticed as it occurred, and at that point, his mind was made up. He stood back up on his feet and aggressively pushed Nate and Lee to the sides.

"YOU CALL THAT 'JUST FRIENDS?!'" he asked angrily as he pointed Wendy out on the dance floor, his voice letting even more rasp out.

"Thompson, wait…!" Lee called out with an outstretched arm.

"NO! I'm done waiting!" Thompson brushed off, throwing his arm up in the air dismissively of Lee's call as he began marching his way over to the dance floor. "I've waited for too damn long now!"

* * *

Wendy had kept leaning in on Dipper, which took him a moment to notice as he was getting lost in his own thoughts, but soon he began to feel the warmth of her face growing inches away from his. That was when reality hit him again and he realized that what was happening was actually happening, which prompted one of the conflicted parts of his head to come to a decision.

His eyes bulged and he quickly pulled away from her in panic an inch before their lips even made contact with one another. Wendy felt his sudden movement away, opening her eyes again to find him in a panicked stance a foot away from her.

"Dipper? What's wrong?" she asked, genuinely concerned.

"I...uh…!" Dipper spoke frantically, realizing that things were moving too fast and he needed a second to breathe and think on his own. "I need to use the bathroom! Like...right now!"

Without leaving room for further question, he quickly sped off through the crowd of people, making his way in the direction of the bathroom as fast as he could.

"Dipper!" Wendy called out to him, standing behind in place feeling confused and unsatisfied with what had just happened.

He didn't look back, however. In fact, he just began to feel sick to his stomach. Not just because he was confused and conflicted, but because he had just abandoned Wendy to deal with it. It all just added to his stress and mixed emotions. He was an inch away from kissing her and the fact that he wasn't totally onboard with it was a sign that he didn't know what he was doing.

His run was unorganized and frantic, and he found himself trying to squeeze between several party guests, which resulted in him slightly bumping into a few people. He apologized as he did so, but didn't pay much mind afterward, as he just kept going on his way.

Unbeknownst to him, however, the swift-moving trail of air that he left behind as he ran contained his cologne scent, which brushed the noses of most of the guests that he passed by. In response, several guest eyes sparkled pink for a brief moment. Those affected were then left feeling confused for a second, but their heads soon turned to Dipper just as he ran through the open doorway leading into the bathroom hall.

* * *

As Dipper entered the bathroom hall, he quickly ran up to the bathroom door, placing his hand on the knob and turned. Right away he realized that it was locked. Feeling like he was going to be desperately ill at that moment, he couldn't help but continuously try to open it.

"Oh, c'mon!" he shouted impatiently.

" _Hey, hey! Occupied, man!_ " a voice called from inside.

Dipper backed away from the door and clenched his stomach. He considered for a moment just rushing upstairs to get to his own bathroom, but thought it would be far too late if he did so. Instead, he resolved to leaning his back against the wall to try to focus all his brain power on keeping himself together.

"Keep it together, Dipper," he said to himself, shutting his eyes and forcing himself to think. "You've been through the literal apocalypse when you were a child, yet you can't figure out feelings for a girl as a teen?" He sat in silence for a moment, trying to clear his head, but to no avail. "UGH! Why me?! I didn't even want to attract any girls today! I just wanted to be presentable! Now Wendy likes me? I thought I was over her! I  _am_ over her, aren't I?  _Gaahh!_ What do I even know anymore?"

" _YOU!_ "

This sudden voice startled Dipper, causing him to jump. He turned his head over to the doorway, where a man stood. Upon identifying his face and features, Dipper was only barely able to make out some familiarity from someone who looked almost entirely different four summers ago.

"Thompson?" Dipper questioned in slight disbelief as he continued to scan his appearance.

Compared to the last time he had seen him, he was thinner and had a bit more muscle; his light mustache stubble was now a full goatee stubble, which admittedly fit him well; and his clothes were fit for his size and he had even grown a bit taller, which was a little surprising considering he was in his late teens years last time they met as well. It was impressive how much he had fixed himself up over the past four years.

"Dang man! Look at you! You've really managed to clean yourself up since I last saw you!" Dipper told him with a smile. Though recalling his sister's talk about cleaning up from earlier and seeing Thompson, of all people, to have improved significantly over the years made him feel more judgemental of himself. "Wow, I really need to listen to Mabel..." he said under his breath. "Anyways, how have you been, bro?"

"DON'T YOU 'BRO' ME!" Thompson scolded as he walked up to Dipper, which prompted him to back up in slight unease. "NOT AFTER WHAT  _YOU_ DID!"

The smooth and deepened voice that he had maintained when talking with his other friends before had completely dropped at that point, and he was shouting with the old raspy voice he was known for four years ago. Not that Dipper was able to tell the difference.

"Huh? W-what'd I do?" Dipper questioned, confused as to what he was claiming.

"I SAW YOU KISS WENDY!" Thomson accused, pointing his finger at him. "I SAW IT!"

"WHAT?!" Dipper exclaimed, his face reddening as he processed this accusation. "I didn't kiss her! I mean...we almost did...but it was her who started it! But then I pulled away! There was no kiss!" Then he couldn't help but wonder something at that moment. "Hold on...why do  _you_ care? ARE YOU TWO DATING?!"

"WHAT?! NO!" Thompson denied, his own face flushing red now. But then he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "Well...I wish!"

" _You_  have a crush on Wendy now?" Dipper asked, this news shocking him.

"I've  _always_ had a crush on Wendy!" Thompson told him.

* * *

5th Grade

_"As you know, since we were all kids, I put up with tormenting from everyone to keep the group together!"_

"Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink!" chanted a young Robbie, Lee, and Nate to a young Thompson, who was chugging down an entire bowl of punch at a party.

Thompson eventually finished the entire bowl, to which he proceeded to burp loudly, which was met by a bunch of laughter from the three boys. His stomach felt liquid and he felt very sick inside, but seeing the three laugh brought a smile to his face.

"Man, you sure are crazy, Thompson," Nate said, wiping a tear from his eye after laughing so hard.

"Crazy stupid," Robbie jabbed before laughing again. "Where's everyone gonna get their punch from now?"

Thompson hiccuped, to which he clenched his uneasy stomach. "Aw man."

"I'm sure they can still get it from Thompson in a few minutes," Lee joked, which got laughs from Robbie and Nate.

Thompson simply stood and took the cruel jokes, rubbing his belly with his hand. Beside him, Nate's eye caught a young girl with purple hair talking to another girl beside one of the snack tables which wasn't too far from where the guys were standing.

"Yo, is that Tambry?" Nate asked, pointing her out to the other guys.

"Yeah," Lee confirmed as he looked over at her. He then turned to Nate and gave him a look. "Why are you asking? Do you have a  _crush_ on her?"

"What?" Nate questioned, his face reddening. "Pfft! No way, man! She's just in my class. Might need to ask for homework later…"

Thompson's attention shifted from Tambry over to the redhead girl with pigtails who she was talking to. A quick glimpse at her face as she turned to the side for a moment was enough to temporarily take away the sick feeling in his stomach. As he looked on at her, he found himself smiling in wonder and interest.

"W-Who is she talking to?" Thompson asked, keeping his interested gaze on her.

"That's her friend. They sit together at lunch all the time," Nate explained. "I don't know her name though. I've never met her."

Thompson thought for a second that maybe he could take this as an opportunity to be the frontman and introduce himself and the others to her. He raised a timid finger up for a second. "Maybe...I can…"

"Well, if you want to get a name, you go and get a name!" Robbie cut off, while not even noticing that Thompson was talking. He stood in front of the guys and cracked his knuckles in preparation. "Watch and learn boys."

He proceeded to smoothly walk up to the girls, the other three watching. The two girls were completely unaware of him as he walked up behind Wendy.

"Hey there, ladies," Robbie greeted in a smooth voice. "Name's Robbie. And you are…?"

The girls either ignored him or continued to be unaware of his presence, as neither of them even gave him a hint of acknowledgment and continued on with their conversation. Robbie looked confused, to which he heard the three guys laughing behind him at his failure.

"Oh yeah! I'm learning a lot, alright!" Lee joked through his laughter.

Robbie was irked by his friends laughing at him, to which he turned back to Wendy and wrapped his hand around one of her pigtails and tugged down a few times, to which her face displayed a look of pure irritation and pain. Tambry looked shocked as he did this.

"Hey? Did you hear me? I asked for your name!" Robbie told her as he continuing tugging her pigtail.

_POW!_

Nate, Lee, and Thompson gasped as they watched the redhead proceed to punch Robbie right in the face, sending him sliding on the ground back to the three. The punch garnered a lot of attention from the rest of the fifth-graders at the party and a lot of heads turned in his direction. He held onto the side of his face in pain as he laid on the ground.

"Idiot," the redhead girl mumbled as she looked on angrily at Robbie.

"You alright, Robbie?" Nate asked as he and Lee came to his side and tried to help him up. Thompson just stood back and smiled at seeing Robbie get his just deserts, knowing he'll learn from this and stay away from the girl now.

Robbie groaned in pain for a second as he sat up, to which he soon proceeded to smile. "That was...awesome."

"Awesome?!" Thompson questioned, his smile fading away with this statement. "That girl just nailed you in the face!"

"I don't care," Robbie said as he gazed on at her. "I'm calling dibs on her."

"After that punch?" Lee asked, looking back and forth between the two hesitantly. "She's all yours, dude."

"Yeah, for sure," Nate nodded as he examined the result of the punch. "Though, you might do something about that chipped tooth she gave you."

"Chipped tooth?!" Robbie said, putting a hand on the side of his mouth in panic. "Aw man! I hate the dentist! I don't wanna go there again!" Needing to see this tooth for himself, he quickly pulled himself from the ground and proceeded to start running away to find the nearest bathroom. He found Thompson right in his way as he stood up, and proceeded to push him out the way by shoving him in the stomach. "Move it, punch bowl cleaner!" he commanded as he sped past him.

Thompson's punch-filled stomach didn't take too kindly to Robbie's shove, and he began to feel incredibly nauseous again. "Oh no! I'm gonna need that punch bowl again!"

He ran a few feet before retching and proceeding to empty out all the punch he drank onto the floor in front of everybody. Most of the fifth-graders, including Lee and Nate, watched in disgust but slight amusement. Wendy wasn't very amused at all, however, and watched in guilt and disgust. Right beside her, Tambry watched in pure amusement, even taking out her flip phone to take a picture.

"So gross!" she said as she looked on at the picture she took, to which Wendy turned to her and gave her a look. Tambry caught this look and gave her a confused shrug. "What?"

* * *

Present

"Ever since grade school, I've liked Wendy!" Thompson had continued to explain to Dipper as he paced around the hall. "But Robbie got in the way and called dibs! And as you know, in fifth grade, calling dibs meant everything! So I had to keep my crush a secret to everyone and accept that Robbie was the only one allowed to go out with her," He stopped pacing and looked over at Dipper. "But then...they broke up! And then...Robbie started dating Tambry! That's when I realized that I had hope! That I was finally allowed to have my crush on Wendy! And from that point forward, I decided to work on myself: work out, get better eating habits, actually shower!"

 _Ouch_ , Dipper thought to himself upon hearing that last part, once again feeling a sense of judgment for himself.

"I was gaining confidence! My friends were starting to actually respect me for who I was and I didn't have to do dumb things to keep everyone together anymore! The old Thompson was in the past! For once in my life, things were actually starting to look up! And I thought that I might actually have a shot with Wendy..." Thompson continued to rant, before turning to Dipper and giving him a look of anger as he started to approach him slowly. "That was until  _you_ got in the way!"

"Got in the way? Dude, I told you! We didn't kiss!" Dipper tried to defend himself, slowly backing away.

"Even if you two didn't, the point stands that she likes you now!" Thompson said as he continued marching up to him. "And don't think I've forgotten  _your_ crush on her four summers ago…"

"My cru...how do  _you_ know about that?" Dipper asked, wondering where Thompson got this information. "I never told you about that!"

"But Robbie did," Thompson revealed. "He told everyone except Wendy when he got his new phone to replace the one that you broke!"

"Look, Thompson! I understand where you're coming from, but I didn't do anything!" Dipper said, standing still to try to clear things up with Thompson. "It's not my fault that Wendy suddenly likes me! Hell, she's never even hinted at liking me before today! And besides, I don't have a crush on her anymore!" He quickly realized he wasn't sure if that statement was entirely accurate. "Well, actually...I don't even  _know_  how I feel about her..."

"So you  _do_  still like her!" Thompson accused further as he towered over him, to which Dipper found his back hitting a wall behind him, no longer having room to run should he need to.

"That's not what I meant!" Dipper clarified, growing slightly afraid as to what Thompson was planning to do. "I was just saying that I don't know what to do about her!"

"Well, I know what I'm gonna do about  _you!_ " Thompson shouted as he raised a fist in the air, prompting Dipper to hold his arms out over his face in preparation for what Thompson was going to do. "I hope you're ready. Because I'm gonna…"

Suddenly, Thompson caught a whiff of the air, inhaling a bit of Dipper's cologne within a close proximity of him. His eye began to twitch as he began to react to the scent.

"I'm gonna…" he repeated as his eyes began to flash with pink sparkles for a moment. As the effects settled in, he looked back down at Dipper. "I'm gonna...HUG YOU!"

Dipper's fearful stance with him holding his shaking arms defensively over his head stopped as he took a second to process this claim. He stopped shaking and raised an eyebrow as he turned to look back up at Thompson. "Wait...what?"

"COME HERE, YOU BEAUTIFUL BASTARD!" Thompson exclaimed ecstatically as he wrapped his arms around Dipper and hugged him tightly, even lifting him up from the ground.

Dipper was so confused at that moment, though still wasn't thrilled by the fact that Thompson was hugging the air out of him. "Alright, I think I would've much rather preferred a punch in the face compared to this!"

"Why would I do that?" Thompson asked, genuinely shocked that Dipper would think he'd do that. "I love you, man! I'd never do anything to hurt someone as frail and noodle-y as you!"

"What the hell?!" Dipper asked, now officially 100% weirded out by what was happening. He put a hand on Thompson's face and pushed him away. Thompson let go of him and he dropped on the floor, to which he proceeded to quickly crawl a good distance away before standing back up on his feet. He got into a defensive stance, looking over at Thompson and preparing himself for any move he might try to make next.

"Dipper?"

He turned to his right and saw Wendy suddenly walk into the hallway, which made his skin go cold.

"Wendy…uh…"

"What's going on? Are you okay?" she asked as she started walking over to him.

"Back off!" Thompson demanded as he walked up to her. "I saw you two together earlier! You had your chance, but Dipper's mine now!"

"Huh…?" Dipper questioned, his confusion growing by the minute.

"No, he's not! Dipper likes me!" Wendy claimed, trying to push him aside, but to no avail. She glanced over his shoulder and at Dipper. "Right, Dipper?"

"Uhh…" Dipper said, unsure of how to respond.

"There you are, whatever your name is!" said the brown-haired girl with the punch stain on her top that Dipper encountered earlier, whom upon sight, he had realized he had completely forgotten about until now. "I was wondering when you'd come back for that dance you owe me."

"Oh God…" he said to himself, not looking forward to what he felt was about to happen.

"Dipper, who is she?" Wendy asked him giving him a suspicious look.

"She's the girl I ran into that I was telling you about over at the punch table," he explained awkwardly to her.

"And she doesn't even know her name?" Wendy questioned, giving him a curious look.

"Hey! I'm still qualified enough to be loved by him," the girl defended, giving Wendy a look of her own.

"Well, as someone who actually  _knows_ Dipper's name and doesn't have a blatant stain in the middle of my shirt, I can say that I'm even more qualified to be loved," Wendy argued, getting in the girl's face.

"Both of you are wrong!" Thompson claimed. "He called me his bro earlier! Therefore, I'm the one who's most qualified to be loved by Dipper!"

"Well, which one of us do you love, Dipper?" the girl with the stain asked as she turned to him, getting tired of this nonsense. "And explain why it's me?"

"She didn't even know your name a minute ago!" Wendy pointed out as she shoved her in the arm. "You can't possibly love her!"

"I don't love any of you!" Dipper flat out told them all. "Well, I mean, I might... _MIGHT_...admire one of you, but love is out of the question!"

"Well, which one of us do you admire?" Wendy asked, raising an eyebrow. This prompted the three to break into a mix of various shouting over one another claiming that it was them who he had admired.

"Oh man, I really shouldn't have said that," Dipper said to himself, instantly regretting his previous statement.

"Hey, there he is!"

As Dipper looked up, his eyes bulged as he spotted a large number of people who had entered the bathroom hallway. It took a minute to process the fact that the people were about half of the entire party guests who came to the Shack. Now they all stood beside Wendy, Thompson, and the stained-top girl, all in a line staring directly at him.

"Is that Dipper?" a voice called out from the crowd.

"Looking good, Dipper!" another voice called out.

"I don't know who you are, but I love you Dipper!" yet another voice called out.

"Be with me, Dipper!"

"No! Don't be with her, be with me!"

"I'd be a better girlfriend than any of these people!"

"Don't listen to her! I'd be a better  _boyfriend_  than all of these people!"

"Tad Strange can assure that he would be the superlative choice for a romantic partner!"

"Shut up, Tad! Be with me instead, Dipper!"

The crowd of people soon became a mix of indistinguishable calls and pleads for Dipper to be their boyfriend or girlfriend. And Dipper was weirded out the whole way through. He didn't know over half of the people in the crowd or calling his name. Some of them he swore he had never even  _seen_  before. Yet all of them were in love with him?

"What the hell is happening?" Dipper asked himself fearfully as he began backing up away from the crowd, who continued to move closer toward him. "Who are these people? Why do they love me? Why do they  _know_ me?  _WHAT'S GOING ON?!_ "

" _STOOOOP!_ " a sudden, familiar voice called out from the crowd that managed to get everyone to quiet down.

Within a moment, Dipper spotted none other than Derrick popping out from the front of the crowd, rushing to stand in front of everyone else, which stopped them from moving further.

"ALL OF YOU! STOP IT!" Derrick shouted further.

"Derrick!" Dipper called out happily, relieved to see his best friend again. "Oh, thank God you're here! Dude, I have no idea what the hell is going on!"

"It's alright, man," Derrick assured him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "I'm here to end this." He turned back to the crowd. "Everybody get this through your fat skulls! Dipper doesn't love any of you! And absolutely none of you are qualified to receive his love!"

"Thank you!" Dipper said gratefully.

"The only person in this room qualified to receive his love is me!" Derrick continued.

Dipper's eyes bulged. " _What?_ "

" _What?!_ " questioned many people from the crowd.

"That's right!  _I'm_  the only one qualified!" Derrick exclaimed as he wrapped an arm around Dipper's neck, which now made him visibly uncomfortable. "Unlike most of you, I've known Dipper for four years! And I've always been there for him! I saved him from bullies! I gave him advice! We've helped each other a ton throughout the eighth grade and throughout all of high school so far! And even when the summer's over, we'll still be together in Piedmont! I've always been there for Dipper and he'll always be there for me! I love Dipper! And Dipper loves me! And  _only_ me!"

There was a brief silence for a moment as Dipper stared forward, absolute weirded out and confused by everything that was currently happening. He glanced around at different people in the crowd as the silence continued, expecting there to be some sort of response, but everyone just stood there.

"Tad Strange objects," Tad said, breaking the silence as he raised his hand up into the air while displaying his usual nonchalant expression. His statement got a rise out of the crowd and everybody starting shouting angrily over one another again.

"I WANT DIPPER!" cried the voice of Mr. Poolcheck, who pointed over at him.

At that moment, the crowd went nuts and began running toward Dipper. In response, he threw Derrick's arm off his neck and began running down the hall leading into the rest of the Mystery Shack, trying to get away from this nightmare of his as fast as it could. Derrick had merged with the crowd in their chase after him down the hall, everybody screaming and shouting for him.

Within moments, the bathroom hallway was empty. Eventually, the bathroom door finally opened up, to which Ryland cautiously poked his head out, looking around for the commotion that he was hearing from inside before. He then proceeded to slowly and casually walk out.

"If, uh, anyone needs to use the bathroom now...it's free!" he called out through the supposedly empty hall, watching his surroundings with caution. "If anyone…...wants it….." Realizing there was no one around, he figured that it would probably have been better to just abandon the scene before it was too late. "I'll...I'll just be on my way…"

 


	29. Many Happy Returns: Part 3

Mabel was beginning to grow anxious waiting for Ryland to come back to the floor room. It had been about ten minutes since he had left to use the bathroom and ten minutes since she asked Soos for a favor. Not that her plan was low on time before execution, but the longer she waited, the more she feared that  _she_ wouldn't be ready to go through with it.

Her plan was simple and inspired by some of her favorite high school romance movies. Ryland would walk into the room and Soos would cue in the slow song. At that point, when Ryland returned to her, either he would ask her to dance, or she would ask him. The 'or' part was a backup, considering she had dealt with more than her fair share of oblivious crushes in the past.

Still, she couldn't help but think of how things could go wrong. What if she doesn't look good enough? What if she forgets what to say? What if he  _rejects_ her?

"God, what happened to me?" Mabel said aloud to herself as she looked down at her shaking hands.

Seriously, though. What  _had_ happened to her? This was the same Mabel Pines that was able to go up to a boy she had never met before and casually say 'My name is Mabel, but you can call me "The girl of your dreams"' when she was only  _twelve_. Hell, she got her Sophomore Homecoming date by going up to a guy in her class and slapping a heart sticker across his chest, saying 'If you're looking for a good Homecoming date, you better  _stick_ with me.'

Yet with Ryland, she had suddenly become insecure of her appearance, thought over the possibility of rejection, and even threw up from nervousness. She felt like Dipper when he asked out any girl.

"Just calm down, Mabel," she tried to tell herself. "You're better than this. What happened to your confidence? You just saw Dipper dancing with Wendy a few minutes ago. If he can do that, then you're more than capable of doing this! And at least I'm not crushing on someone who's hopelessly out of my current age range!"

At that moment, Evan ran by the couch she sat at, holding a cup of punch in his hand as he looked around the room. "Darn it! Candy must've had to go! I can't find her anywhere! She needs to get her drink back!" He turned back to Mabel. "You haven't seen her, have you?"

Mabel's eye glanced around quickly for a moment, wondering how to respond. "Uh...nope! She could be outside. Maybe you can still catch her!"

"Good thinking!" Evan agreed with a nod before bolting away with the drink in his hand, which he clumsily spilled a bit of as he ran.

Mabel watched him speed off and felt somewhat guilty. Both for him and for Candy. At the same time, a part of her couldn't help but feel glad that it wasn't her that he had a crush on. That would bring two levels of awkwardness: being crushed on by a twelve-year-old and crushing on that same twelve-year-old's older brother.

Her eyes then glanced down to a nearby table with a white sheet over it, which was pulled up slightly from underneath on one side, where Candy and Grenda's heads soon popped out and looked at her.

"Is he gone?" Candy asked with a worried whisper.

"Long gone," Mabel told her while also doing a double-take and checking to truly ensure that Evan had left the room.

"Phew! Thank goodness!" Candy said with a sigh of relief as she and Grenda stood back up from the ground. "Things were getting a little too weird before."

"Yeah, but I feel kinda bad. Evan may not have the best...social experience...but he's a genuinely smart and sweet kid with a big heart," Mabel admitted as she rubbed her arm guiltily.

"I'm sure he is," Candy said with a nod. "But...he's twelve. Though, I will say I'm willing to settle for being friends if he does come to his senses."

"That didn't seem like someone who would come to his senses. Someone just has to tell him it ain't happening," Grenda told them flat-out.

"Maybe...but, c'mon Grenda. There's a nicer way of doing so," Mabel replied.

"You're right, sorry," Grenda apologized. "I think bluntly when I'm happy! Marius and I have made up and he's setting up a screening for Pony Heist 3, 4, and 5 at his castle in Austria! And 4 and 5 haven't even gone into production yet!"

"Oh my god! Grenda, that's great!" Mabel exclaimed happily for her before giving her a stern look. "But you have to promise not to spoil them for us. I still haven't watched  _Polo: A Pony Heist Story_  yet."

"I promise," Grenda swore while holding her hand up honestly in the air. "Now enough about me. Where's Ryland?"

"Oh, he went to the bathroom," Mabel replied. "He should be back any minute now."

"Did you talk to him while we were gone?" Candy asked, wondering how much has progressed within the last ten minutes or so.

"Sorta…" Mabel nodded while looking somewhat unsure. "I do know that he doesn't like when a relationship is forced, so...I know what'll scare  _him_  off…" She then smiled reassuringly. "But the good thing is: I have a plan!"

"A plan?" Grenda and Candy asked at the same time, glancing over at each other with looks of skepticism.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I sound like my brother," Mabel admitted how crazy she sounded for having developed some sort of plan as opposed to behaving normally like his brother does. "But the point is that it will bring us closer together while not necessarily  _forcing_ us together...in a way."

"Well, whatever it is, we know you can do it, girl!" Grenda said while putting her hands on her shoulders confidently. "Candy and I will just give you two some breathing room while also keeping hidden in case Evan comes back. So if you need us, we'll be under that table," she told her while pointing back under the table with the sheet over it.

The two proceeded to walk back over to it, with Candy turning back around toward Mabel once more. "We believe in you!" she shouted before she and Grenda quickly descended under the table, letting the sheet go back down to hide the two. They both then proceeded to stick out a thumbs up from underneath the sheet, assuring Mabel that they were there for her, which she found quite sweet of them.

She then reverted her focus back to the plan at hand. "Alright, Mabel. Ryland's gonna come back any second now and you gotta be ready for that dance. You got this! Everything will be fine! As long as Soos comes through and makes sure to play the music on cue. Which is no worry either! Soos always comes through!"

* * *

It wasn't easy, but in the midst of all the ongoing chaos regarding half the party and his friends seemingly falling in love with him, Dipper managed to slip away back to the floor room. Not that their hunt for him was over, as some of them roamed around various areas of the Shack while some also came back to the floor room as well.

To hide, he decided to try to blend in with the other partygoers while also taking attention away from his face by covering his head up with his hoodie. He kept his head down as he walked, making sure the darkness of the hood concealed his face and that no one could easily trace him back. He was aware that it wasn't the best plan of hiding either, considering he wore the same exact hoodie he was running away from them in and just seemed to return into public sight, where anybody could spot him should they recognize his hoodie.

The only reason he came back to the floor room, though, was to get help. He needed aid in figuring out how to solve his unordinary problem with the entire party falling for him little by little. When the girl with the punch stain and Wendy started falling for him, he had a feeling something was up, yet there was something equally convincing about how they approached him that he was beginning to believe he may have just been lowering his self-esteem. But then Thompson suddenly flipped from wanting to beat him up for 'stealing' Wendy, to wanting to fight with  _her_  over  _him_.

And as if his best friend and half the party saying they love him didn't add on to the weirdness. At this point, he had known that something weird was going on. Now it was a matter of finding out  _what_  was happening and getting the help to solve it.

He already lost Wendy and Derrick. Now he needed to find others.

_Soos._

Of course. If anyone could get a good grasp on an odd social situation, it would be him. And he and Melody already loved each other and were getting married. No way could they could make a sudden shift the way others have before.

Keeping his head down, he casually walked over to the DJ booth in the corner of the room, where Soos was rocking and bobbing his head to the beat of the ongoing song as it played through his headphones. Right beside him, Melody was typing at a computer, presumably to check on the ongoing playlist settings.

As he stepped up to the booth, he briefly glanced at his surroundings to assure he wasn't being followed or stalked at that moment. Once he knew he was clear, he looked up at Soos as he stood at the booth above him and nervously glanced around as he whispered over to him.

" _Soos_."

Soos paid him no mind and kept bobbing his head to the music. Dipper looked up and was reminded that he was wearing headphones and a whisper wasn't going to do anything. He then raised his arm up to his stand and snapped his fingers in his face, grabbing his attention. He placed his headphones down and around his neck as he looked down and spotted Dipper.

" _Soos, it's me_ ," Dipper whispered while cautiously looking around the room for a second, still watching out for any pursuers.

"Oh, heya Dipper!" Soos said in a casual voice, which also happened to be much louder so he could talk over the music. However, Dipper didn't want him to speak very loud and wanted to assure their conversation could bring as little attention as possible.

"Pipe down a bit, man," Dipper pleaded, while waving his hand in a downward motion to prompt him to keep it quiet.

"Heh, sorry bro, but we're at a party right now," Soos reminded him. "Kinda hard to keep quiet when everyone's here to turn up, ya know?"

"Yeah, yeah, but this is serious. I need your help," Dipper tried to tell him.

"Alright, dude," Soos said as he lowered down to get a little closer in order to hear him. "I'm all ears."

"Look, man. Things are getting pretty weird around here," Dipper began quietly, still watching his surroundings. "For some reason, half the party is like...in love with me or something! Even Wendy almost kissed me a minute ago!"

"Dude...Wendy? Almost kissing  _you?_ " Soos said, giving an amused look of disbelief. "Look, no offense, Dipper. But you were already starting to lose me when you said that half these dudes were in love with you. Now, I'm completely gone."

"I'm  _not_ kidding, Soos!" Dipper tried to convince him. "Yes, I know it all sounds hard to believe, but…"

He continued to explain himself to Soos, but as he did so, Soos froze. A smell caught his nose, to which he began to sniff a bit, inhaling Dipper's persistent cologne scent. Soon, his eyes briefly flashed pink sparkles and he unfroze. His eyes darted back down to Dipper and his pupils enlarged at the sight. Having grown a new portrayal of him in his mind, Soos began to lean against his DJ stand as he invested himself in every word that Dipper was saying.

" _Uh-huh_ ," he mindlessly nodded to whatever Dipper had just said while keeping a fixed gaze on him.

* * *

Suddenly, Ryland finally popped out of the bathroom hallway. Having been eagerly glancing back and forth at the hallway every three seconds for the past few minutes, Mabel's heart began racing as soon as she finally saw him come out.

"There he is!" she said aloud to herself. She was beginning to feel her nervousness slowly get the best of her again, but she focused hard on suppressing it, not wanting to have her emotions swerve her away again. However, her knee kept on bouncing up and down out of her control, tapping her foot rapidly against the ground. "Stop that, you stupid knee! Now's not the time to work against me!" she shouted as she gave her knee a few hits, which managed to calm it down a bit.

She then looked back over at him and noticed him making his way toward the snack table, presumably to grab a snack before heading back over to her. And so she adjusted her focus back to her plan.

"Alright, he's gonna walk back over here in a second," she reminded herself. "I just need Soos to cue in that 80's slow jam now. Like...immediately…" she said, beginning to grow somewhat nervous that the song hasn't been cued in just yet.

Every second that passed where the music didn't change added to her stress. While Ryland was still at the table, she needed that song to play before he got back so he doesn't get too comfortable when he gets back to the couch.

"Seriously, what's taking Soos so…WHAT?!"

She had looked over across the room at Soos's DJ booth in the corner and was horrified when her eyes fell upon him distracted by a conversation with someone. As she looked on at the person he was talking to, she began to quickly recognize the hoodie and the overall outfit, as well as the nervous mannerisms he seemed to be making.

"Dipper?! No, no, no!" she exclaimed, placing her hands on her head in distress. "C'mon, bro! This isn't the time for one of your bro-talks with Soos!"

She looked back at the snack table and saw that Ryland was still filling up his plate with snacks, not even looking her direction. Realizing she didn't have much time, she took to her only option. She grabbed her phone out and quickly dialed up Soos's personal cell number, putting it up to her ear as it started ringing.

* * *

"...and then when I went to talk to Wendy about it, she called me cute!"

"Oh man, no way…"

_RIIIIIIIIING!_

"Then, she grabbed my hand and pulled me onto the dance floor!"

"Holy smokes…"

_RIIIIIIIIING!_

" _Then_ , she tried to kiss me, but I backed off and ran away because I had to think about things!"

"That's wild, dude…"

_RIIIIIIIIING!_

"Soos, are you actually listening to a word I say?" Dipper asked, starting to grow skeptical by Soos's supposedly amazed comments, finding them a little too constant, even for him.

"Every. Single. Syllable, dude," Soos assured with a nod as he kept leaning on his DJ stand, which was beginning to tilt a little bit with how much pressure had been putting on it.

_RIIIIIIIIING!_

Melody's attention finally got brought to Soos's ringing phone, her heading turning to it. "Soos, sweetie, are you gonna answer your phone?" Melody asked as she picked it up and held it out to him, not looking at the Caller ID.

"Nah, I'm busy," Soos brushed off without breaking his gaze at Dipper, which made Melody raise an eyebrow. "Tell me more, my dude."

"Soos, why are you acting weird?" Dipper asked, growing slightly uncomfortable by Soos's behavior.

_RIIIIIIIIING!_

"Soos, it's about to go to voicemail…" Melody reminded him as she continued to hold the phone out to him.

"That's fine," Soos brushed off yet again, still not breaking his gaze on Dipper, as he continued leaning against the DJ stand, which kept on tilting it little by little.

* * *

_BEEEEP!_

"' _Sup, dawg. I'm probably...like...sucking really hard at Lario Kart right now, but when I win...or...lose...whatever...then I'll get right back to you. If that's fine."_

"No! That's  _not_ fine! UGHH!" Mabel groaned exasperatedly as she hung up the phone.

Mabel's groans attracted the attention of Candy and Grenda, who promptly poked their heads out from under the table sheet and up at her.

"Mabel, what's wrong?" Grenda asked.

"Is everything alright?" Candy asked.

"No! Soos messed up the plan!" Mabel told the two as she turned to them.

"What even was the plan?" Candy asked, raising an eyebrow in curiosity.

"I asked him to play an 80's slow jam when Ryland came back!" Mabel began to explain. "Like almost as soon as Ryland left, I had told him to do so. But when Ryland walked back into the room, I looked over at Soos and Dipper was talking to him and distracting him! I tried calling his phone just now but he didn't pick up! The whole plan basically relied on him getting this one thing right, and now that he didn't get it right…"

"Uh, Mabel…?" Grenda attempted to alert as her and Candy's eyes bulged in slight concern.

"...the whole plan is basically ruined!" Mabel continued, not aware of Grenda's alerting voice. She sighed and placed her face in her hands irritatedly. "I just wanted a way to try and naturally ease in my relationship with Ryland! A way for me to tell him how I really feel about him without coming off as forced and pushy! Just a natural build-up so I can say  _I like him_  without scaring him off! Is that so hard to ask?"

Once her rant settled down, her eyes then glanced at Grenda and Candy, who were both silently pointing and making gestures, their eyes bulged warningly.

"What?" she asked, not understanding.

As she kept looking, she began to process that they were pointing and gesturing  _behind_ her. The dead silent and almost fearful expressions on their faces posed no good news.

Then she realized  _exactly_ what they must've been referring to.

And she knew  _exactly_ what she had just done.

 _Oh no_ , she thought to herself as her face flushed a bright red before even turning around.

But when she did turn, she saw him.

Ryland stood right in front of her with the most stupefied expression on his face as he casually held a plate full of snacks in his hand. He stared at her with his mouth hung open, unable to mouth words as his bulged eyes were full of nothing less than shock.

She noticed that he looked staggered in the most neutral way possible though, with little to no indication of whether he was pleased or disturbed. He just stood there and stared without saying a single word or without bleeding another separate ounce of emotion.

But it didn't even need to be said aloud that he knew now.

_Oh, he knew._

" _Hi…_ " Mabel attempted to greet casually through her bright red cheeks and numb-feeling insides.

" _...hey…_ " Ryland attempted to reply without sounding awkward through his shock.

"Oh, would you look at the time!" Grenda said from under the table pretending to glance down at her wrist as if she had a watch there. "Candy and I should get going!"

She backed up under the table sheet again, pulling Candy along with her. However, the two girls proceeded to then peek their eyes through by pulling up the bottom of the sheet up and looking while lying on the floor.

Mabel dreaded having to talk things out this way, but seeing as they were right there, things obviously had to be addressed. "How much did you hear?"

"...enough, I suppose," Ryland answered, his eyes still displaying shock over everything. "I'm assuming this wasn't your intention?"

"No…" Mabel confirmed as she rubbed her arm awkwardly.

"Well, I...guess...I…"

_CRASH!_

The conversation between the two was interrupted and their attention, as well as the rest of the partygoers', was redirected to the corner of the room at Soos's DJ booth. There, he had collapsed upon his stand, which fell entirely onto the floor, also pulling on some wires and other attached equipment, which promptly shut off the music. Melody placed her hand on her mouth in shock of the incident, whereas Dipper stood over him the same way. Soos, on the other hand, just lay on the ground, still conscious, yet appeared unfazed.

"Soos, man! Are you okay?" Dipper asked, kneeling down and coming to his aid.

"Yo, Dipper, dude," Soos said as he pointed up at him from the ground, smiling. "You still look good from down here."

_Oh no...Not him too!_

How was  _that_ going to be Soos's response when he had just fallen over and on top of all of his equipment? He had to have been affected too! But how?

"Hey, there's Dipper!" he heard from behind him, which prompted him to turn around.

"Uh oh…" he said to himself once he saw various partygoers scattered throughout the room notice him and begin to slowly make their way toward him.

_"Dipper! Where you been, man?"_

_"I've been looking for you, Dipper!"_

_"So have I!"_

_"Me too!"_

_"Well, you can go away because he's mine!"_

_"No, he loves me!"_

"This is a nightmare…" Dipper said to himself as he progressively backed up further and further from those who were beginning to approach him.

"Hey, there he is!" he heard a voice from behind him, albeit, a familiar one.

"Huh?" Dipper asked as he turned around, and spotted the rest of Wendy's friends: Robbie, Tambry, Lee, and Nate, all sitting in the corner of the room.

"Yo, Dipper! Thompson's looking for you!" Lee called out to him. "He's gonna try to rag on you for taking Wendy from him!"

They all appeared unfazed by him compared to a bunch of other partygoers, and so he immediately assumed they weren't after him. Realizing he needed allies, he quickly ran up to them.

"Guys! It's not what he seems! I didn't take Wendy from anyone!" Dipper tried to explain to them. "She just...liked me all of the sudden! Half the party did! Including Thompson! I'm telling you! Something weird is happening! You gotta help me out here!"

As he stood well within the proximities of the four, his scent had been given enough time to get to them, and they all began to gaze at him.

"Yeah, something weird is happening!" Robbie said as he stood up from his chair and walked up to him. "Why aren't  _you_ going out with me instead of Tambry?"

" _WHAT?!_ " Dipper exclaimed in horror, taking a few steps back from him.

"Robbie, you sick freak!" Tambry shouted angrily as she proceeded to get up and push him. "Dipper doesn't want you! He wants me!"

"Wrong! Not that that's unexpected coming from  _you_ ," Robbie argued, crossing his arms at her.

"You both are wrong. Dipper obviously wants me!" Nate butted in, standing up and narrowing his eyes at the two.

"Sorry, man. But you're wrong too. It's  _me_ he wants," Lee said as he stood up and walked up to Nate.

"I DON'T  _WANT_ ANY OF YOU!" Dipper shouted frantically before running away from the group.

He ran a good few feet before stopping in front of Lazy Susan.

"There you are, Dipper!" she said as she stood in front of him, holding out a pie. "I baked you a pie! It might have some cat hair, and maybe some of my own hair, but I made it out of love for you!"

"GAH!" Dipper yelled fearfully before dashing away from her, soon finding himself running into Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland.

"Dipper! How would you like to hop in a police car and drive around really fast?" Blubs offered. "With me, we can go around town breaking as many laws as we want without getting caught!"

"No! Break laws with me instead!" Durland pleaded. "This old man doesn't even like going fast with his age!"

"I do too!"

"Do not!"

"GAAH!" Dipper yelled as he ran away from them next, sliding across the dance floor before stopping in front of yet another person.

"Dipper! I've been looking for you!" Gideon Gleeful told him with a frantic look in his eye. "I know I've already said that I wouldn't go after Mabel anymore, but surely  _you_  ain't outta the question, right?"

" _GAAAAAAH!_ " Dipper yelled, running away from him and along the side of the room.

As he ran, he continued to run past remaining unaffected party attendees, affecting them and causing them to join in on the love-hungry mob pursuing him throughout the room. What weirded him out the most was how many more familiar faces began to join the mob. Having so many people that he knew and befriended now chasing after him wanting to love him has made him far more uncomfortable than any situation he's ever had with any girl in his life.

Even Melody had joined the mob after he passed by Soos's DJ corner, where she was tending to him on the ground. After passing by, however, she dropping her aid for him and proceeded to join in the pursuit, to which Soos followed immediately after.

"Why is this happening?" Dipper asked himself aloud as he ran. " _What's causing this?!_ "

At that point, he realized he was just running around in circles throughout the floor room. He needed a better way of escaping the mob, and the only way he was going to do that is if he left the floor room. He looked over at the doorway leading through the rest of the Shack, where he had led his pursuers before. Except now, he needed another place to go. The floor room was no option anymore, as the entire party was basically chasing him at that point.

He ran for the doorway, but unbeknownst to him, he ran past his sister and Ryland, leaving them within a trail of air that held the scent of his cologne. They had watched the madness unfold before them, even jumping out of the way as the mob neared them.

At the same time, the trail of air containing his cologne had managed to reach as far as the nearby table. From which underneath, Candy and Grenda soon emerged.

"Was that Dipper?" Grenda asked as she pulled the cloth up and looked over at him as he ran for the doorway.

"Dipper, wait!" Candy exclaimed as she rushed from underneath the table and began to chase after him. "I take it back! I've gained interest again!"

Grenda also got up from underneath the table to join the mob. But in the process, she accidentally bumped her back against it, which caused a glass vase that sat on top to wobble around landing on the edge of the table.

Confused, Mabel looked on as her friends began to chase Dipper down and raised an eyebrow. Clearly, the entire party chasing after him meant that something had happened. "Okay, what the heck did Dipper do this time?"

Ryland processed this question just as his eyes finishing flashing with pink sparkles. "I don't know, but I think I wanna go check it out!"

He proceeded to take a few steps forward as if he was about to join the mob, but Mabel quickly grabbed his arm and pulled him back before he did. "Wait! What about...what about  _us?_ "

"What  _about_  us?" Ryland asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Uh... _hello?_  Have you completely forgotten what you just overheard a few seconds ago?" Mabel asked, finding his questioning ridiculous.

"Oh...right," Ryland realized what she meant. "Look, Mabel. You're really nice and all…"

"Uh, huh?" Mabel nodded eagerly.

"...but, I'm sorry. I just don't feel that way about you," Ryland told her bluntly, while also not showing any remorse. "Well, not nearly as much as I do with your  _brother_."

At that moment, the glass vase on the table had tipped over and shattered on the floor, which seemed to occur at the same moment Mabel felt her heart shatter.

" _W-what?_ " she questioned as her face began to display a strong mix of both sadness and confusion, her eye twitching uncontrollably.

"I'm sorry. I really am," Ryland told her as he displayed a slight look of guilt. This cleared up quickly as he turned around and took off to follow the mob.

As soon as he hit the doorway, he turned the corner out of the floor room and was gone. Mabel continued to stare on in confusion and desolation. She had never gone from feeling so anxious to so empty in such a short amount of time. If she wasn't so muddled, she'd probably start to cry, but she couldn't. She was too busy processing the fact that she had just been rejected by a guy who favored her brother while tuning out pretty much everything else that had just happened, including the giant mob and her brother being chased down. Nonetheless, she was crushed and had no idea what to do anymore.

It was one thing to be rejected.

It was a whole other thing to be told that your crush would rather be with your brother.

* * *

In the basement, Ford glumly poured two mugs of coffee from the machine's decanter. Once he did so, he took both mugs back to a table where Stan sat looking just as sullen. He handed him his mug as he took a seat across from him.

"Thanks, Sixer," Stan said as he accepted the mug from Ford and took a sip. "Good to know that the only family I can truly count on now is my brother."

"Now, Stan. While I am just as disappointed as you are at the fact Dipper and Mabel forgot about their very simple obligations, I don't think that serves as a mean to call it as some sort of utter betrayal," Ford tried to justify. "They are just teens at the end of the day."

"Yeah, and as I said, this is what teens do," Stan claimed bitterly. "They stop caring about their commitments. The world begins to revolve more around themselves and they have less regard for the family."

"Stan, how can you make such a general judgement like that?" Ford asked.

Stan turned and looked at himself in the faint reflection of the decanter back on the counter and sighed. "It's how I was, wasn't it? With mom and dad? Then I see it in people like Wendy and all her friends. Slacking and not caring. Sure, they had some of those tendencies as kids, but even then, they still had  _some_  regard."

"Well, hopefully, they can still come back around at some point," Ford said hopefully before taking a sip of coffee. "Again, in the minds of the youth, there's always room to learn and adapt."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever," Stan dismissed in an unconvinced tone as he stood up. "Let's just get to work on this whole Bill thing. The sooner, the better, and all that."

"I suppose we need to get started at some point," Ford said as he stood back up, walking over with his mug back to the counter. "Let me just get some things set up here. I still have to get back into my usual routine of working around the lab. Basic tasks and steps are still escaping me."

"You woke up hours before me so you could work on this place, and you still have things you need to set up?" Stan asked, shocked at how much his brother needs to get done routinely.

"Luckily, it's not a lot," Ford said as he organized drawers and cabinets. "Perhaps my most foolish mistake before we left earlier was not enabling the lab's security system. Considering how many guests we have at the Shack for this party, it's unwise to leave the entire place open to being discovered behind something as indiscreet as a gift shop vendor. Anyone can just come down here and touch and mess with all my inventions and projects, which, admittedly, I also need to find better protection for instead of cheap cases and cabinets."

"Well, even without security, in the thirty years I ran the Shack, keeping the basement hidden behind the vendor never failed once," Stan said confidently as he walked around the lab, looking around at the various cabinets. "Trust me, Ford. This town has grown too dumb to expect anything as smart as secret, hidden doorways."

He then looked to the side under one of the cabinets, noticing the cologne from earlier. He raised an eyebrow, walking over to it and picking it up to examine it more closely.

"Hey, Ford?" Stan called out as he held it out in his hand.

Ford's eyes glanced over in his direction in response to his call. His eyes bulged as they laid upon the cologne in his hands again.

"Stanley! What did I tell you about that cologne?" he asked, narrowing his eyes irritatedly as he walked over to him and swiped it from his hands.

"Hey, hey! Calm down, Sixer! I wasn't doing nothing with it!" Stan said as he raised his hands up defensively. "I was just gonna ask: I thought you put that away before we left?"

"I did put it away," Ford told him as he opened the cabinet above and set the cologne inside.

"Well, I just found it sitting out on top of this counter here," Stan said as he gestured to the counter. " _Outside_  of the cabinet."

"Huh. Really?" Ford asked. "Hmm, that's odd. Maybe I didn't put it away after all. Perhaps we're just remembering it wrong."

"Okay, there are two problems with that assumption," Stan began to point out. "First of all, why would  _YOU_  make such a stupid mistake and not put it away? Second, as the man with a demon in his head giving him apparent short-term memory issues, even  _I_  remember you putting that stuff away. Adding those two together, then I think something's gotta be up."

"So what are you saying?" Ford asked as he started to see his point. "You think someone's been down here?"

_DING!_

Stan and Ford's heads quickly turned over in surprise to see the elevator arriving. As the elevator opened up, a short man proceeded to step out.

" _Where's Dipper?!_ " shouted Toby Determined, who took a few steps out of the elevator, eyes darting around the lab.

"INTRUDER!" Ford exclaimed as he and Stan both jumped into standoff positions upon on the sight of Toby in the lab.

"GET HIM!" Stan shouted, to which Ford quickly pulled out a weapon from the side that looked akin to a shotgun.

"Wait... _what?_ " Toby questioned upon sight of the weapon.

_BANG!_

"CHRIST, FORD!" Stan exclaimed, startled and shocked by Ford firing the weapon at Toby. "What the hell?!"

"What?" Ford questioned as he put the weapon down to the side. "I handled things, did I not?"

The two looked back forward and saw Toby stuck within a coat of a yellowish material. The material itself blasted him up a few feet above the ground and onto the wall, sticking him. It was as if he was placed in a cocoon of glue and stuck against the wall at the same time.

" _Ughh…_ " Toby groaned painfully due to the intense knockback and sudden movement of his body and head against the wall.

"The hell is that stuff?" Stan asked as the two walked up to him.

"Foam glue," Ford claimed. "Just another weapon from the arsenal I've obtained from my time across dimensions. It has the strength and stickiness of spider webbing."

"Yeah...great facts, but you wanna address the creep in our lab who's after our great nephew?" Stan asked before turning back to Toby. "Explain yourself!"

" _I'm_  just trying to find  _Dipper_  so we can rekindle our  _love_  with one another!" Toby explained before puckering his lips and making a bunch of kissing noises. " _Mwah, mwah, mwah! Mwah, mwah, mwah! Mwah, mwah, mw-_ "

Stan cut his weird and creepy kissing noises short by placing his hand at his throat, choking him. "Toby, you freakin' little creep! You're talking about my sixteen-year-old great nephew!"

" _Creep?_ " Toby questioned through to his choking. "I'm...no  _creep!_  Dipper loves me back! We  _love_  each other!"

"Do you  _want_  me to call the police?!" Stan asked, tightening his grip on Toby's throat, getting fed up with his creepiness toward his nephew.

"Hold on, Stan! Let him go!" Ford demanded as he came to a potential realization.

"Let him go?! Ford, he's-!"

"I'm aware! But hold on for a moment, will ya!" Ford ordered again, pulling Stan back away from Toby. Toby coughed as his throat was released, to which Ford began to focus his attention on him. "Sir, how did you get into this lab?"

"Are you kidding me?!" Stan asked dumbfounded by Ford's choice of question. "Out of all the things to be concerned about, that's what you ask?"

"Dammit, Stanley, I told you to hold on!" Ford reminded aggravatedly.

"I just  _saw_  the open  _doorway_  and came  _down_ ," Toby began, which grabbed the attention of the Stan brothers back. "The  _vending machine_  covering it  _knocked down_  by the mob upstairs  _also_  looking for Dipper."

"Knocked down...?" Ford repeated, raising a curious eyebrow.

"...by the mob...?" Stan repeated.

"...looking for Dipper?!" they both repeated at the same time, exchanging concerned looks with one another.

* * *

Upstairs in the gift shop, there were several various partygoers under influence of the cologne. They ran around, searching the Shack for Dipper. They called out for him, physically fought over him, and generally pleaded for his presence.

The gift shop's vending machine was tipped over as a result of the ongoing search, and not even because people thought there would be a doorway into the basement behind, but because they thought Dipper would be hiding  _inside_ the machine. There were many who ignored and dismissed the newly revealed doorway or didn't even notice it. However, some found it worth searching.

Stan and Ford quickly came to this discovery as they emerged from the elevator. While there weren't many people, it seemed like they had been waiting for the elevator, standing outside watching them come out.

"Alright! All of you: get out!" Stan ordered the people there, gesturing back over to the stairs for them to leave. "C'mon! Each and every one of you! Get outta here!"

The twins pushed them out as they walked forward, following their orders for them to leave. As they walked up the stairs, they quickly sped out from the doorway and over the tipped vending machine. And just as the twins reached the top of stairs themselves, their eyes bulged at the sight.

Throughout nearly every square foot of the entire gift shop, there were people scrambling around. Shelves and racks were flipped over, and pieces of merchandise had been moved aggressively, often resulting in destruction of sorts. Most prominently, the twins had noticed most of the guests calling out the name of their great-nephew, creepily begging for his love, as well as promising to love him.

Ford had taken the cologne from the basement along with him in his jacket and took it out as he observed these strange behaviors. Realizing the assumption he presumed Stan had been making earlier, he came up with a plausible guess as to what was happening.

"Well, Stanley. I think you may have been right about  _someone_ coming down into the basement after all…" he said as he gestured toward the cologne in his hands to his brother.

* * *

Dipper was running out of places to hide and running out of stamina to run. Since running from the floor room, he had run through and around almost every single accessible corner of the Mystery Shack. While he managed to get a few of his lovesick pursuers off his tail, a good amount continued to stick behind him, making his attempts to hide just about useless. Then when he went running again, he would end up regaining the attention of those he had managed to escape, which meant he would have to lose them yet again.

He had hesitated multiple times to leave the Shack entirely, but he knew he wasn't going to find any greater help from the rest of the town than he would from the people he knew that were already present. However, most of the people he knew that had the potential to help him had fallen for him as well and only made things even more problematic.

The next place he had run was upstairs into the attic, which was one of the last places he hadn't gone in the Shack other than his bedroom, which was a dead end in itself and a place he'd rather not let himself get cornered. Otherwise, he didn't have much elsewhere in the attic to hide or go.

That was until he quickly spotted the window pane to his right as he ran up the stairs. While he had his hesitations about going outside, it was at that point he had realized he just needed to get away to a spot he couldn't be reached. And while going up to the roof didn't mean he couldn't be reached, it made him much harder to get to.

As the mob gained on him, he frantically pushed one half of the window pane outwards and jumped outside onto the roof tiles. He jumped back to his feet and ran back over to push the window back in place before a pursuer jumped out along with him. He used all his force to keep the window clicked in position.

As a secondary precaution to ensure no one could get through the window to follow, he took off his hoodie and tied a knot around the hinges to the frame using the long sleeves. He took a step back and watched as his idea helped keep the windows shut no matter how hard the several townsfolk inside tried to press on it. He didn't dismiss the idea of them possibly shattering the window to get to him instead, but he still felt a sense of relief upon realizing he was somewhat free at that moment.

That was before he glanced down at himself without his hoodie and quickly remembered the catastrophe he had done to his shirt earlier, glancing at the rips where his sleeves used to be.

"Man, what  _was_ I thinking?" he asked himself as he shamefully placed a hand on his head.

He then heard screeches, which prompted him to look back at the window. Quickly, he noticed a bunch of teen girls, including Candy and Grenda, upfront against the window pointing at him.

"Look at those arms!" one shouted.

"So  _noodle-y_ ," another girl swooned as she looked on flirtatiously.

Dipper was genuinely disturbed by the whole situation overall, but still couldn't help but go red-faced upon these comments. It didn't help his cause that he continued to stand right in front of the window where all his want-to-be-lovers were, and so he decided to do himself a favor and remove himself from their sight. He stepped to the side and climbed up onto the roof above the attic, crawling on the tiling until he reached a comfortable seam for him to just sit back and rest by himself.

"Glad I got out of that," he said with a sigh as he restfully lied his head back against the tiles, closing his eyes for a brief moment to think. "Now what am I gonna do?"

He opened his eyes again, staring forward for a bit as the close-to-setting sun beamed upon the side of his face. He was able to make out an odd shadow, however, as well as another figure within his peripheral vision to his right. He turned his head and spotted a girl on the roof with him who sat right beside the rooftop exit from the gift shop.

From the clothes and the hair, Dipper was able to conclude it was Mabel. She was looking away from him and didn't appear to have acknowledged or even notice his presence on the rooftop. By her general posture, she looked to be slumped as though she was upset or saddened by something. The fact that she was up on the roof by herself before he came along only seemed to back up that idea.

He hadn't seen his sister since they had spoken in their room before the party, and therefore had no idea of the culmination of events that could've led her to this position. And so he was curious and concerned for what brought her there.

"Mabel?" he asked, attempting to grab her attention.

Her posture immediately went straight upon hearing his voice and she turned her head over to him, looking on at him in surprise. After processing who he was, her eyes narrowed.

"YOU!" she exclaimed angrily as she turned her entire body toward him, pointing a finger in his direction as she began to walk toward him.

Dipper's heart dropped. "Oh no...not you too!" he said to himself as he backed up against the roof fearfully and held his arms up in front of himself defensively. "Anybody but  _you!_ "

Just as he began to consider jumping off the roof as his next means of escape, it was too late. Mabel had walked right up to him and began lightly slapping him repeatedly, albeit aiming for his face, but blocked by his arms.

"What. Did. You. Do?!" she asked angrily as she continued to slap his arms. "I spent the past few weeks of summer talking and connecting with Ryland and then when he finally finds out how I feel, he claims he'd rather be with my own brother instead?! You big...crush-stealer!"

Dipper's eyes widened. "Woah, woah, woah!" he said as he proceeded to quickly grab hold of both of her wrists mid-slapping, which she tried to resist at first, but stopped. He then pushed her back, trying to get her out of his close proximity. "Hold on...you... _don't_  have a crush on me right now?"

"What?!" Mabel exclaimed in utter disgust of the question. "Ew, Dipper! I'm your sister! Why would I have a crush on you?"

"I don't know! Maybe because pretty much everyone else from the party does?" Dipper brought up as he rubbed his arms from her constant slapping. "You were there, weren't you? You didn't see me getting chased by everybody?"

Mabel thought for a second, beginning to recall the incident as it was brought back to her focus. "Yeah...actually, I did. What was up with that?"

"Again...I don't know!" he restated. "It just seems like everybody I interact with today just suddenly falls in love with me! Anybody I talk to! I know whatever's happening isn't natural, so that's why I asked. I was afraid that the same thing might've happened to you."

"Well, thankfully for both of us, that's absolutely NOT the case," Mabel assured him as she took a step back in disgust at the thought.

"Yeah, thankfully," Dipper claimed as he sat back down, easing down from his fears a moment ago. "But I still have a large mob of people inside where that case does apply. Including most of the people we know. Soos, Melody, Robbie,  _Derrick…_ "

" _Pfft_ , Derrick? Nice," Mabel chuckled at the idea, which prompted an unamused look from Dipper. She quickly cleared her throat guiltily. "Sorry."

"God, and even Wendy..." Dipper claimed as he stuffed his face in his hands out of embarrassment. "We almost kissed…"

Mabel gasped and pushed her cheeks together excitedly. "Really?!"

"Yeah, but it's not like she has a  _real_ crush on me," Dipper quickly dismissed, not wanting to get her hopes up. "She's just another result of whatever the hell is happening with these people."

"Oh…" Mabel said, her excitement dying down a bit.

"But, yeah. That's what's going on with me…" Dipper said, lying back against the tiles again. "What were you doing up here by yourself?"

Mabel walked up and sat beside him, laying her back against the tiles too. "Well, Ryland found out about my feelings for him. But instead of returning them, he rejected me because he, uh, said that he liked you instead…"

" _Gah!_  Are you kidding me? Him too?" Dipper jolted up, horrified at this revelation.

"Yeah...I got upset about it and came up here to, you know, just be all sad and stuff," Mabel continued to explain. "Then you came along..."

"...and you got mad and started slapping me and blaming everything on me," he continued for her, giving her a look.

"First, I'm sorry about that," Mabel apologized, rubbing her arm guiltily. "Second, imagine how you'd feel if any of your crushes ever rejected you because they wanted to be with me instead."

"Point taken," Dipper said with a light chuckle.

"But yeah, now I know that he probably doesn't  _REALLY_  like you like that. Which is good for both of us," Mabel claimed with a smile. "Unless…"

"Nope, absolutely not," Dipper shook his head, denying what he knew she was thinking. "Trust me, he's all yours."

"Good to know," Mabel replied.

"It would be even greater to know what the hell is going on," Dipper claimed, going back to the matter at hand. "What the source of the problem even is. Why everybody I make contact with...or even walk past...just falls head-over-heels in love with me."

"Yeah, with that cologne you're wearing, you'd expect them to do the opposite," Mabel jabbed. "Seriously, that stuff smells like someone tried to make a cologne based on the word 'intricate'." She then took another whiff of the surrounding air. "Ironically, it kinda smells like one of Love God's potions mixed up in there too…"

"Wait a second...the cologne…" Dipper remembered as he pulled on the collar of his shirt and smelled himself. "Of course! That's what's causing all this! It's gotta be!"

"The cologne?" Mabel asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah!" Dipper nodded, confirming. "After our conversation in our room, I became a bit self-conscious about my looks and my general capability of being presentable to girls and others, and so I decided to work on myself like you told me to." He pulled on one of the ripped sleeves, gesturing toward it. "I may have gone a bit overboard…"

"That's why you ripped your sleeves?" Mabel questioned, chuckling with amusement as she looked at his appearance. "Wow...I didn't want to say anything, but I thought you were just going through some sorta teen mid-life crisis or something!" she laughed for a bit before immediately reverting back to a straight and honest face. "But yeah, never do that to your clothes again."

"Already noted," Dipper assured her in a well-aware tone. "Anyway, Derrick came along and shared your thoughts about my stench, and so he suggested we go look for cologne to cover up the scent."

"Why not just take a shower?" Mabel asked, dumbfounded by the fact that this was the idea they had come up with.

"Something about not having enough time or something? I don't know! Just let me finish the story!" Dipper pleaded, which she accepted. "So then we went into Ford's lab while neither him or Stan were there. I thought it wasn't a good idea, but Derrick insisted. Then he found a bottle of cologne inside one of Ford's cabinets and told me to use it. I didn't think it was a good idea either, but I went ahead and put some on. And so here's the thing: I didn't think much of it at the time, but after putting that cologne on, Derrick acted a bit...weirder than usual. More touchy and friendly towards me. And everyone else only started acting weird after I put on the cologne. So I think that anybody who smells the cologne falls in love with me...except you...for whatever reason that is. I don't know. This stuff was in Great Uncle Ford's lab after all."

"So you're saying that this was Derrick's idea and that we should blame him for all of this?" Mabel's thought process immediately jumped to.

"C'mon, Mabel. Now isn't the time to be playing the blame game," Dipper told her. "But yeah, if I'm right, then it's totally Derrick's fault."

Mabel gasped, clenching her fists excitedly. "Does that finally give me an excuse to punch him in the face?"

Dipper raised an eyebrow. "Um...no?"

"Drat," Mabel said, hopes dying down. "It was worth asking though."

"Anyway, I guess if this is Ford's cologne, I assume he'll have a solution for all of this," Dipper explained before a potential thought entered his head. "Assuming, neither he or Stan were affected by it either…"

"Well, I'm right next to you and I haven't been affected," Mabel reminded him. "Maybe they can't be affected either."

"True. Maybe they aren't," Dipper asked as he placed his chin on top his hands and thought. "I didn't see them in the mob of people chasing me, so it's a possibility. Then again, the last time I saw them was right before everything got weird."

"Well, they have to be around somewhere," Mabel claimed.

"Shouldn't you know?" Dipper asked. "I mean, you were with them, right?"

"No, I was with Ryland, Candy, and Gren-" she cut herself off as she came to a realization. "-da. I was with them...instead of Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford...Oh, no..."

"What?" Dipper asked as he looked over at her.

"The promise, Dipper!" Mabel reminded him as she placed her hands on his shoulders and shook him panickedly. "The one we made to them this morning! About not leaving their sides! About not getting distracted! I got distracted by my friends and Ryland and forgot about our Grunkles!"

Dipper quickly recalled the promise as she went on and began to realize that he was at fault for the same thing. "Oh man...I forgot too! I was speaking with them and then left to get a drink, but then I got caught up with Wendy... _before_  things hit the fan!"

"I threw this big party to celebrate them. For us to go and spend time with them after four long years without them. And then we promised that we wouldn't get caught up in other business…" Mabel said as she laid her head back against the tiles.

"And then we got caught up…" Dipper claimed for the both of them as he rested his own head back as well.

"Ugh. And Soos even tried to warn me about what I was doing and I just blew him off," she added as she placed a guilty hand on her forehead.

They both felt terribly guilty for their actions. Breaking their promises to spend time with their great uncles at a party thrown for them in favor of getting caught up in romantic drama. Now they laid upon the roof, realizing things long after they've already happened, and without a clue where their great uncles were or if they were okay. But they knew they'd be disappointed with them.

"What kind of family are we?" Dipper asked as he stared up at the sky guiltily.

"The terrible kind," Mabel answered. "That's what."

"If I could do this day over, I would've just taken a shower after waking up," Dipper claimed.

"If I could do this day over, I would've put a bag over Ryland's head so I never had to think about his stupid, cute face until the party ended," Mabel claimed.

They just continued to stare up at the sky, feeling utterly guilty for their broken promises to their great uncles and wishing they could redo the whole day.

However, their attention was suddenly drawn to the side as they saw and heard the trapdoor burst open.

Soon enough, they saw Stan crawl out and sprawl out onto the tiles, which surprised the twins and prompted them to quickly stand back up. Right behind him, Ford climbed up, which appeared to be a slight struggle for him. As he got his legs out, he quickly closed the trapdoor behind.

"God, for all the hidden passageways and entrances you have around the Shack, I can't believe the only other way you have of getting to the attic is by climbing up to the damn roof," Stan said annoyedly as Ford helped him up from the tiles.

"Well, if you feel like going through a love-crazed mob instead, then by all means, be my..." Ford began to Stan before his eyes looked past him and glanced over at the twins on the roof. "...guest."

Stan caught his eyes looking behind him and turned his head to look too. His eyes bulged in surprise as they laid upon the twins, who stared back at the two in surprise as well. However, he began to look upon them unhappily as his memory of their broken promises came back into his head.

"Well, LOOK who it is..." Stan claimed as he narrowed his eyes at the two.

Mabel glanced over at Dipper and backed up against him, holding her arms out in front of him in defense as she looked back at the Stans.

"HALT!" she demanded the Stan twins.

"Mabel, what are you doing?" Dipper asked, growing uncomfortable with how close she had backed herself up to him.

"Before either of you take any step closer, you have to answer one simple question," Mabel asked as she continued to defend her brother. "On a scale of 'Ew, that's my nephew' to 'I could still go for it', how badly do either of you want Dipper?"

"Jesus Christ, Mabel…" Dipper claimed in disgust, realizing what she was doing, but also feeling she could've worded things differently.

"Uh...how about: I won't hesitate to throw you both off of this roof if you ask a question like that again," Stan claimed in disgust, glancing over at Ford who held a similar look of distaste.

"They're good," Mabel said with a smile as she stepped out of her defensive pose for Dipper. "Grunkle Stan!"

"Great Uncle Ford!" Dipper called out gratefully.

The two proceeded to run up to the two, hugging them both. Ford looked reluctant to hug back, while Stan simply didn't appear joyful about the hug.

"Some nerve you two have hugging us after what you both did," Stan said grumpily.

"We know!" Dipper claimed as he kept hugging.

"And we're so, so sorry!" Mabel claimed as she only tightened her hug, even beginning to feel herself tear up due to her guilt. "We know we abandoned you guys and we know we broke the promises we made earlier and we know you two are upset with us and we know we totally don't deserve to be forgiven, but we're sorry and we truly love you both and we really have missed you after the four years we've been apart!"

The two processed the apology for a moment, to which Ford still appeared reluctant and Stan still looked unsatisfied.

"Well, you're right about one thing," Stan said as he pulled the two off of them without regret. "You both  _don't_ deserve to be forgiven."

Dipper and Mabel lowered their heads sadly in response, both of them feeling truly guilty for what they've done. Ford then took a step forward and placed a hand on Stan's shoulder before giving a slight smile

"But...we're going to anyway," Ford claimed. The twins looked back up at him and gave grateful smiles in return.

"Oh, c'mon, Ford!" Stan exclaimed at him. "You gotta let them sit in the guilt before you forgive! That's how this stuff works!"

"Shut up, old man!" Mabel exclaimed as she and Dipper both wrapped their arms around the two again. "You know you love us!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Stan brushed off with a light chuckle as he pulled the twins away again. "But keep in mind that even though we forgive you, you're still not really in a place to be going 'Shut up, old man' again."

"Yeah...my bad," Mabel acknowledged as she rubbed her shoulder awkwardly.

"Anyway, I feel as though we should address the obvious matter at hand," Ford switched the subject as his eyes glanced over at Dipper.

"Right...the whole 'Almost everybody's in love with me' deal," Dipper nodded as he rubbed the back his neck.

"Indeed…" Ford nodded as he reached into his jacket and pulled out the cologne. "Now, Dipper, I reckon that you have somewhat of a recollection of this item, correct?"

"I wish I didn't," Dipper said, basically admitting his knowledge of it.

"I see," Ford said as he lowered the cologne. "So, to my understanding, you had gone down into the lab without either Stan and I knowing?"

"Yes, me and my friend, Derrick both," Dipper admitted as well, feeling guilty for not trusting his earlier instincts.

"Why?"

"Because...I stunk," Dipper answered bluntly, which, despite his seriousness, made Mabel need to put full effort into not cracking a chuckle. "I was insecure about my presentation around girls and people and I needed to do something about it. And instead of just taking a shower like a normal person, I listened to my friend and went into the basement and put on a...love cologne...and started this whole mess. But it wasn't my idea, and I didn't want to go down there without you, and…" He sighed and just accepted his fate. "...you're still going to be mad at me anyway."

Ford sighed as he walked up to him and placed his hands on his shoulders. "No, my boy. I'm not mad. I was teen too, you know. In fact, being a teen was the whole reason I even invented this stuff in the first place. And while its final function wasn't my initial intention, I've learned that the general concept was just one of the many lesser developed ideas of my youth." He glanced between him and Mabel. "The point I want you and even Mabel to understand is that I've held onto many of those failed ideas after all these years rather than sloppily disposing of them, simply to keep them out of getting into the wrong hands. My lab is full of similarly dangerous items and other potential disasters just waiting to happen should they be used wrong. To prevent things from getting out of control, as we can make note of from today, all I ask is that whether it's you or your sister, not to touch or use any items that you don't know the function of. You both are family and you're teens now, and so I think I can trust you both to come down there whenever it's needed, even without supervision from Stan...or...well, without supervision from me."

"Hey!" Stan exclaimed, taking slight offense to his brother's lowkey claim that he wasn't as trustworthy to supervise in the lab.

"I just need you to understand that not everything is what it seems and that down there, some of the most innocent looking objects could actually destroy the world within seconds," Ford continued.

"That sounds terrifying...and oddly malicious…" Dipper claimed, raising a concerned eyebrow.

"Trust me, the second I have the chance, I'll be getting rid of most of it," Ford assured him before placing his hand on the top of his head and scruffing it a bit. "All I ask is for you two to be careful and to be smart about what you use down there. Just to prevent future incidents like this."

"Alright, I promise," Dipper nodded with a chuckle.

"I promise!" Mabel claimed as well.

"We should be recording these promises this time," Stan told Ford as he crossed his arms. "Ya know, just to have them ready."

"Ah, drop it, Stanley," Ford said as he nudged him in the shoulder.

"So now that that's out of the way, how do we fix everything?" Dipper asked.

"Right, well, it's honestly just a waiting game," Ford admitted.

"What?! Seriously?" Dipper questioned, hoping that wasn't Ford's only solution.

"I admit that in college, I had a habit of overusing the cologne and spraying way more than I needed to on myself each day I decided to wear it, which sort of bonded the scent to me for awhile even after I stopped wearing it," Ford explained. "I even took my only week off to deal with constantly showering myself trying to kill the scent, to which the day I came back, everything appeared to be normal again. Of course, I was avoided more because everyone retained the memory of their love for me, but...normal. Generally, though, I'm unsure how long it will take before the effects die down completely once you've managed to wash off the scent. It could be days."

"I can't deal with this for days!" Dipper exclaimed worriedly as he placed his hands on his head.

"Grunkle Ford, what did you even put in the cologne that makes people fall in love with the user?" Mabel asked.

"Gosh, it's been so long," Ford said as he tried to remember. "But it was the usual cologne items you would find in any typical store-bought cologne. Perhaps even safer alternatives to the more hazardous chemicals."

"You also mentioned borrowing some ingredient from a guy with wings," Stan chimed in.

"Right. A loud, hippie classmate of mine who wore wings offered me a tiny sample of one of the many substances he stored inside little flasks he kept on his belt," Ford stated as he recalled.

Mabel gasped. "Love God!"

"Wait a second…" Dipper said as he realized something. "Mabel, didn't you say earlier that the cologne smelled like it had a mix of one of Love God's potions?"

Mabel suddenly grabbed ahold of Dipper's arm and took a good, long whiff of his fragrance, which he found slightly weird. Upon finishing, she let out a large exhale and gasped again. " _Young Love!_  That's why people keep falling in love with you!" She turned to Ford. "Grunkle Ford, that ingredient you borrowed came from a literal love god!"

"A love god?" Ford asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Or a Cherub," Mabel added with a careless shrug.

"We met one here in Gravity Falls the last time we were here and he had a belt of love potions like you described," Dipper explained. "The ingredient you borrowed was a sample of one of his potions, which makes the love-inducing effect."

"Love potions are also supposed to last only three hours," Mabel added. "It probably lasted longer for Grunkle Ford because of how much longer he had exposed others to the smell."

"Well, three hours isn't as bad," Ford stated.

"But still, you three wanna wait up here for three hours?" Stan asked, not thrilled by the idea. "I'm already feeling woozy by the thought of waiting three minutes."

Mabel snapped her fingers at Dipper as she came to another realization. "The anti-love potion we stole last time! I still have it!"

"You brought that stuff back home to Piedmont and back?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Sometimes I use it whenever I need to get over my exes," Mabel answered, glancing away innocently.

"That's...unhealthy…" Dipper told her, raising an eyebrow in concern.

"Anyways, if we could make our way back to our room, I could get the potion and we could use it on everybody else and reverse the effects of the cologne!" Mabel told him.

"That could work," Dipper nodded, before looking back at Ford. "But Great Uncle Ford said that everybody still remembered the effects of the potion afterward…"

Mabel realized this potential issue and thought over it. "Well, I mean, we could just be honest and explain to everybody that it was all some sort of…"

"I almost kissed  _Wendy_ , Mabel," Dipper reminded her, looking her dead in the eye. "How exactly am I gonna go about explaining  _that?_ "

Mabel thought for a second. "Yeah...that is a problem…"

"Well, obviously, memory erasure is out of the question," Ford said as he tried to think of a solution as well.

"Though, I'd definitely consider it…" Dipper said under his breath.

"I have an idea," Ford said, snapping his fingers. "For now, you two and Stan just head over to your room to locate the potion, then bring it downstairs and meet me in the lab. We'll work from there."

"On it!" Mabel nodded as she and Dipper began to run along the tiles before climbing along the side of the roof, making their way over to where their room was located.

Ford proceeded to kneel down and open the trapdoor, to which Stan grabbed ahold of his shoulder.

"Hold up. What exactly are you gonna be doing?" Stan asked, wondering why he's being left with Dipper and Mabel as opposed to coming along to help him.

"You'll find out when we meet again," Ford said as he placed his feet back down into the door. "Trust me. Just go and help the kids!"

Stan sighed and proceeded to turn around and follow after Dipper and Mabel as they climbed the roof tiles up to their room, although at a slower and more manageable pace for his age. Ford watched for a moment before descending down the ladder, closing the trapdoor right above him again.

* * *

Dipper and Mabel had managed to crawl along the steep rooftop of the Mystery Shack over to their bedroom window. However, it quickly became apparent to them that their bedroom window wasn't as easy to reach as the other windows, as there was no tiling underneath it and it was right below a slight overhang that the tiles they stood on created.

"Now how're we supposed to get down there?" Dipper asked as he looked down below at the window.

"We could use my grappling hook…!" Mabel suggested before she patted herself down and realized she didn't have it. "...which I left back inside our room…"

"Great," Dipper said sarcastically, realizing their predicament wasn't going to be as easy to figure out.

Suddenly, Stan came climbing up the roof behind them, panting and out of breath. As he reached them, he sat down to rest.

"Geez, Grunkle Stan," Mabel said as she examined him. "You just climbed a roof. Not run a marathon."

"That's the thing...I've spent the last four years sailing the world, yet I need to take a break to breathe after a minute of climbing a damn roof," he panted, holding onto his chest tiredly.

"You should probably see a doctor about that," Dipper chimed in as he stepped up to him.

"You know, walking up here, you can really tell how old and worn these tiles are based on how much they sink in when you step on them," Stan said as he examined the tiles he sat on. "Seriously, with tiles like these, who knows how worn the wood underneath must be."

"Wait, so if the tiles are that worn…" Dipper began, glancing back and forth between the two. "...is it really a good idea for us all to be right next to each other in the same spot on the…?"

_CRACK!_

"...ROOOOOOF!" Dipper screamed along with his sister and great uncle as the two suddenly fell along with the collapsing roof underneath their feet.

_THUD!_

The fall wasn't very long, but it wasn't pleasant. However, it could've been much worse, considering they still managed to land right on top of Dipper's bed inside the twins' bedroom. The three groaned as they sat up and looked around, processing their location.

Dipper looked down and groaned annoyedly as he saw the roof rubble and grime all over his bed. "Of course we were right above  _my_ bed."

"Well, at least we're inside!" Mabel claimed, trying to look at the bright side. She jumped up from the bed, quickly brushing her clothes off before running over to her side of the room and looking through her drawer. "Just gotta find that anti-love potion! I know it's around here somewhere."

Stan got up from the bed, brushing his clothes off as well while walking toward the center of the room. He glanced up and around the room, soon realizing that he hadn't even been up there or seen the place in four years. The last time he saw it, it was empty and had been freshly packed up by the twins not too long before. But here he stood inside and it was full again.

When he remembered Dipper's side of the room, he couldn't say he recalled much. He was a simple kid who liked to read books and hunt weirdness. His idea of decorating then was very minimal, and it still was four years later. There was little he added to his side of the room, aside from more books and some more acne cream. But it still represented him. The nerdy kid that Stan used to know.

He then glanced over at Mabel's side and remembered how it used to be. The colorful posters of kittens, boy bands, and rainbows alongside other pictures of her summer memories. The general splash of life that she had brought to an otherwise bland and colorless room. Yet four years later, she's managed to pretty much do the same thing, except slightly more organized, yet just as extravagant. There were newer posters of kittens, boy bands, and rainbows, along with pictures from home, which seemed to include her friends and parents. All of them so sparkly and colorful.

She must've coated the pictures with glitter or something because there's no way any photo glistens that much naturally.

One photo stood out from the others though. An old picture from the last summer they spent together. He and Ford were stood up, while Dipper sat on his shoulders, and Mabel sat on Ford's. They held water balloons in their hands and smiled widely as if they were mid-laugh. Ford appeared to be mid-laugh too, but Stan himself appeared to be reacting to a water balloon that he had just taken to the face, tilting over slightly.

This photo stood out not because Stan recognized it, but because it was pinned separately from Mabel's other photos of her friends and family. Completely on its own, it hung. It was as though she had put a separate value into that one picture than she did all the others.

Stan recalled his earlier annoyances with the twins' broken promises and how seeing them try to pursue after potential romantic relations rather than spend time with them had led him to think that the kids he knew weren't the same anymore. That four years had changed them far more than he had thought. That they don't value family as much anymore. That they no longer cared.

' _The kids ain't kids anymore. They're teenagers. And this is what teenagers do.'_

He had already forgiven them, but now he knew that  _he_ was wrong. When he looked around the room, he realized that the kids he knew four years ago hadn't gone anywhere. They were still inside the teens that stood there with him right that second.

Sure, they grew. But so did their hearts.

"Found it!" Mabel announced as she pulled a flask of the dark purple anti-love potion with the same old spray bottle top attached to it. She walked over to Dipper with it.

"Nice!" Dipper said with a smile as he took it from her. "Good thing you held onto it all these years." He turned to Stan. "Grunkle Stan, are you ready to go?"

Stan remained silent as he continued to look on at the picture.

Mabel raised a concerned eyebrow. "Grunkle Stan?" she asked as she walked over to him, tugging on his jacket.

He finally turned back to her and glanced between her and Dipper. At that moment, he envisioned the two in their current positions as twelve-year-olds again, watching as they looked back at him in concern. Then, he watched them revert back to their present selves, watching as their matured appearances settled back in and four years passed right before his eyes.

"Grunkle Stan, are you okay?" Mabel asked, still giving him a concerned look.

He smiled at her and then at Dipper. "Yeah, pumpkin. Everything's fine," he assured her as he rubbed the top of her head. "I've just realized that...I'm gonna hate dealing with the both of you again for yet another summer."

Dipper and Mabel smiled, knowing that this was his way of saying 'I've missed you both and I'm glad you're back.' They proceeded to both walk up to him and wrap their arms tightly around him, to which he finally broke and hugged back.

"We've missed you too, Grunkle Stan," Mabel claimed, which Dipper nodded in agreement to.

_SLAM!_

The three quickly looked up from their tender hug to see the door to the room had been kicked open by one of the many people affected by the love cologne that stood at the door. The eyes of everyone that stood at the door quickly glanced upon Dipper, to which the front girl pointed at him and smiled widely.

"THERE HE IS!" a girl shouted.

Dipper pushed away from the hug between the two in panic. "We need to get out of here!  _We need to get out of here!_ "

"No worries, broseph!" Mabel exclaimed as she reached for her grappling hook from her shelf. She quickly wrapped an arm around her brother and aimed back up at the hole in the ceiling that they had fallen through, shooting the grapple upwards as it quickly stuck, and retracted the two upwards, leaving Stan behind.

"HEY!" he shouted after the two as they zoomed up. "What about me?!"

Before he could give the twins a chance to respond, the Dipper-obsessed mob began pouring into the bedroom, forcing Stan to have to back further away. Realizing he'd run out of breathing room momentarily, he glanced around for a way of escape. His eyes fell upon the triangular window, to which he decided to make a split-second decision and go for it.

He jumped straight through the window, breaking the glass and beginning a short-lasting fall, plummeting to the ground from the second floor of the Shack.

Dipper and Mabel stood back on their feet on top of the roof again, brushing themselves off before walking up to the edge to see what had happened to Stan. They saw him lying on the ground, groaning in pain.

"Grunkle Stan!" Mabel called out to him worriedly.

"Are you okay?" Dipper asked.

"I forgot...that that room was on the second floor…" he said as lay in pain, also feeling slight resent for the twins and their quick decision to leave him behind right after he had begun to warm up to them again.

Though, he'd chew them out for that another time.

* * *

_DING!_

Ford quickly turned around to see Dipper, Mabel, and Stan emerge from the elevator.

"Ah, there you three are," Ford said as he walked up to them. "I was worried you might've gotten into a brawl with the mob."

"Nope! Luckily, most of them are more focused on finding us in the attic than anything else. Getting to the elevator was pretty easy," Mabel informed him, before glancing over at Stan. "Getting Stan's dislocated arm back into place after he jumped out a window from the second floor...not as much…"

"It saved another hospital visit, but for the record, I'd strongly vote against either of you ever becoming doctors in the future," Stan said, narrowing his eyes at the two as he rubbed the affected arm from earlier.

"Anyways, we got the potion," Dipper said as he presented the anti-love potion in his hand for Ford to see.

"Excellent," Ford nodded as he took the potion in his hands. "Just to ensure that it's just as effective as its name implies, we should perform a quick test on someone who got affected."

"So should we go back up and grab somebody?" Dipper asked, not thrilled about the idea of going back up again.

"No need. We already have Mr. Determined over here," Ford said as he gestured over to the wall beside the elevator, which Dipper, Mabel, and Stan didn't notice. There, Toby Determined continued to hang from inside a ball of Ford's foam glue stuck to the wall.

"Hello," Toby waved.

"GAH!" Dipper, Mabel, and Stan screamed in horror at the sight of Toby's hideous face.

"God, I forgot that little troll was down here!" Stan remarked as he looked on at Toby.

"At least  _Dipper_ thinks I'm  _beautiful!_ " Toby defended before dreamily looking over at Dipper. " _Don't you_ , Dipper?"

"Yeah...uh...you just keep thinking that, pal," Dipper said awkwardly as he flicked his fingers at him.

"Anyway, let's just hope this works," Ford said as he walked up to Toby with the potion, fingers around the trigger of the spray.

"Wait, what are you…?  _GAH!_ " Toby shouted as he took a spray of anti-love potion to the face by Ford. He then began coughing and hacking as the potion settled in on him and his body processed it.

Ford allowed the potion to settle in for a minute before stepping in front of Toby again, who was still coughing slightly. "Mr. Determined?"

"What the…?" Toby asked as he looked around. "What  _happened?_  Why do I feel like I've  _died_ inside?"

"He must get that feeling a lot," Stan claimed as he watched alongside the teens.

Mabel stepped forward, dragging her brother in front of her for Toby to see. "Toby, on a scale of ' _yowza!_ ' to ' _bazinga!_ ', how attracted are you to my brother, Dipper?"

Toby stared at Dipper for a moment before gaining a feeling of extreme awkwardness. " _Yowza…_ " he said, trying to look away from him in disgust. "And I think I'd be  _arrested_ if I said anything higher."

"You're damn right you would be!" Stan confirmed, pointing a stern finger at him.

"This is so  _weird…_ " Toby said as he continued to look on at Dipper. "Was I  _obsessed_ with you just a moment ago?  _Gosh_ , what went over me? This is just  _too weird_  for me now! I can't look at you  _the same_  anymore!"

"No worries. You will again later," Ford said as he suddenly grabbed a long, wide tube attached to a machine behind him, holding it out in front of him.

He then pressed a button beside the tube, which expelled a puff of a white gas in Toby's face. As Toby inhaled the gas, he felt himself suddenly drift off before becoming unconscious. The rest of the gas dissipated into the surrounding air, to which Ford then proceeded to connect the tube into another machine next to him.

"What did you do to him?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow as he looked over Toby's unconscious body.

"Knockout gas," Ford told him simply. "I designed it myself."

"Does it...erase his memory too?" Dipper asked further. "I mean, he still remembered what the potion did to him."

"No memory erasure," Ford added.

"So...then what…?"

"Look, we already know the damaging effects that memory erasing does to the mind," Ford reminded them. "So rather than doing that on a large-scale, we're going to try to play things a bit dumb here. Since we know it works, I'm going to combine the anti-love potion with an hour-long knockout gas, then send the mixture through the entire Mystery Shack ventilation upstairs. Everyone inside will receive the mixed effects, diminishing their love for Dipper and knocking them out."

"And how are we playing things dumb?" Mabel asked.

"Well, as said, we'll have an hour before the effects of the knockout gas wears off, and so in that time, we'll fix everything up and place all the party guests back in their positions in the floor room," Ford explained further as he placed the anti-love potion into a boiling machine. "The playing-dumb bit factors in when everyone reawakens, to which we'll simply try to play the whole thing off as a dream or something of the sort. I don't know the exact excuse yet, but if all goes to plan, we should be able to brush the whole thing under the rug as if nothing happened without potentially damaging anyone's minds."

"Which means I'll also be able to brush off my confession to Ryland as one big dream he had!" Mabel realized aloud.

"You sure you wanna do that?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow. "Maybe it's worth talking about and getting out of the way, now that it's out and about."

"True, but I didn't like the way he found out," Mabel told him.

"Well, as long as everyone is no longer in love with me and they could all brush off the whole thing as a dream and not see me weirdly afterward, then I'm good," Dipper said.

"Well, considering you're the guy they 'dreamed' about getting  _weird_  with, I think it's safe to say that you're still gonna get  _some_ weird looks your way," Mabel said with an amused smile as she rested her elbow on his shoulder. "But don't worry. I'm sure most of them will get over it after a day or two."

"It's better than having to explain anything," Dipper admitted, willing to accept his lesser fate.

"Mixture's ready to go," Ford claimed as he inserted the finished anti-love/knockout gas mixture into the machine. He then pressed a red button, which activated the machine, causing it to light up green. "Firing it through the upstairs ventilation now."

* * *

Through about every single vent throughout the Shack, a dark purple gas began to slowly fume through. In nearly every room, there stood at least a handful of people, though some rooms had significantly more people than others.

Most of the mob stood in the attic and within Dipper and Mabel's bedroom, where they were last seen. Though plenty stood out in the gift shop and living room as well.

As the gas settled in, however, people began to drop to the floor, the effects of the knockout gas in the mixture doing quick work. With a simple brush of the nose, the gas sent people unconscious. Before one knew it, the entire mob knocked out entirely, with occasional stragglers able to crawl on the ground a bit before the gas finished them off.

The gas continued to pump through the vents for another minute or so before getting shut off. But the job had been long done at that point and the plan was working so far. Everyone in the Mystery Shack had been successfully knocked unconscious, with an approximate hour between them and their awakening.

After about five minutes of letting the gas dissipate and the air clear up, the Pines family quickly emerged from the basement, riding straight up the elevator and running up the stairs to see the results. As they looked around the gift shop, they saw just what they had hoped.

"It worked!" Dipper exclaimed, relieved. "Everyone's out cold!"

"Brilliant!" Ford exclaimed excitedly with a smile on his face. He glanced down at Meridian and checked the time. "Now we about fifty-five minutes before they all wake up! In that time, we need to carefully drag all these bodies back into the floor room and make it look like none of this had ever happened. Try to nail the dream illusion we're going to attempt to set up as best as we can. We need to be quick though!"

"Don't worry! This won't be the first time I've had to drag a bunch of bodies to somewhere," Stan remarked casually before walking forward to begin the job. "Colombian prison punishments are brutal."

"As for you, Dipper…" Ford mentioned as he turned to his great-nephew. "While we're cleaning up the Shack and the guests, you need to go clean up yourself. Wash that cologne off your body as best as you can. Take a dozen showers and scrub every skin cell if you have to."

"Oh, believe me, Grunkle Ford. If it's been as long as I think it has been since his last shower,  _he's going to have to,_ " Mabel assured him as he looked over at his brother.

"Alright, I get it," Dipper said with an eye roll as he began to make his way over to the bathroom, having already realized the vitality of him needing to take a good shower for once. "I'll shower as best as I can."

"Make sure to use a hand scrub!" Mabel called out to him as he walked away. She looked back up at Ford, who gave her a curious look. "Again, he's  _probably_ gonna need it."

"Well, anyways, we should get to work," Ford stated as he glanced down at his watch again. "We're on the clock. The sooner we work, the better."

"Right!" Mabel agreed, just as the two began to join Stan in gathering bodies.

* * *

Time had passed quickly, but the Pines family had worked just as fast as they needed to. With approximately five more minutes still on the clock, Mabel, Stan, and Ford had managed to transport just about every unconscious body scattered throughout the Shack back to the floor room in manageable places and positions.

Mabel had been put in charge of placing everybody back in place as best as she could. She made sure that Soos and Melody were stationed back by the DJ booth, which had been fixed up after Soos collapsed over it. She left Soos's head resting on top of it at an angle that wouldn't cause yet another collapse, whereas she left Melody resting on the ground beside him with her back fixed up against the wall. Additionally, she had placed Candy and Grenda back under the table where they were previously hiding together, sat Wendy and all her friends in their seats back in their corner of the room, and even rested Ryland and Evan back on the separate ends of the couch. As for all the other party guests, she simply laid them around the dance floor or against the walls in groups and such, though she wasn't entirely sure who was hanging out with who, so she simply played mini-matchmaker and just grouped up those who looked best together.

While Mabel handled that, the Stan twins fixed up the damages throughout the Shack that were caused by the recklessness and carelessness of the running mobs of people. They had even placed the vending machine back in a functional position in front of the basement doorway, though Ford had commented how he needed a better way to secure it so such a blockage couldn't be simply toppled over with sheer force.

Luckily, most of the damages that needed fixing were very minimal and required nothing more than a bit of cleaning up and putting back into place. However, there were slightly more annoying destructions that were caused that they knew they had to worry about, but not right away, including the hole broken through the ceiling to Dipper and Mabel's room. Things that would take too much time to clean up or repair, they just put to the side to worry about later, agreeing to just make up dumb excuses should anyone ask.

Dipper spent about forty minutes in the shower, washing off every bit of his body to the fullest extent to ultimately assure he got get rid of the smell of the cologne. While Ford had said that one shower didn't rid him of the scent entirely, that had been due to his overuse of it over several days. Even though Dipper had gone overboard when he put it on, it was the only time he had used it, and therefore, the scent wasn't as bonded to him as it had been to Ford.

Once he had finished, Dipper could even admit himself that it had been the cleanest he's ever felt. And he appreciated the feeling of walking out of the bathroom like a new man. He realized that he, perhaps, didn't value the feeling of being clean as much as he should've. Knowing that he had let his insecurities get the best of him enough to the point where he would stop showering made him feel ridiculous. Even if he was a busy man, there was always a time to clean himself up.

That was a thought that made him smile as he looked on at himself in the mirror.

He proceeded to quickly get dressed, putting on a clean new red shirt, tossing away his old ripped-sleeves disaster in the trash. Upon placing his lumberjack hat back on his head, he glanced at himself in the mirror again and quickly knew something was still missing.

That's when he realized that he had left his navy blue hoodie back outside, still tying the attic window shut.

It was no chore to get it back, however, as he simply climbed back up the secret rooftop exit from the gift shop to make his way back to the roof. Then, he carefully ran along the tiles, making his way back outside to the attic window. There, he untied his hoodie from the hinges, brushing it off quickly. Before putting it back on, however, he gave it a quick whiff and quickly realized it was still heavily coated in the scent of the cologne.

Laundry was a whole separate story at that point, and while it was his signature hoodie since the start of high school, he wouldn't say he was really desperate for it at that moment.

"I'll buy a new one," he told himself casually, accepting the fact that it was probably time to retire the hoodie after all that it had been through.

He ran back to the rooftop exit, stepping past it to the edge of the tiles where he dropped the hoodie from the roof into the trash can below at the front of the gift shop. He then ran back to the trap door and climbed back down before making his way back to the floor room to join the rest of his family.

"I'm here and completely scrubbed down!" Dipper told them cheerfully as he presented himself to the three.

Mabel shoved her face within his personal space for a moment so she could smell for herself. "Hey! Nice going, bro-bro! You actually smell like a person again! I'm impressed!" she said as she gave him a playful shove in the arm. "Now if only you could act like one around girls, you'd be set!"

"Alright, don't push it now," Dipper warned her, though gave a hearty chuckle to her teasing, willing to accept that he still hasn't perfected his issues.

"But, seriously though. Nice work," she genuinely complimented, patting him on the back.

"Yes, excellent work, Dipper," Ford agreed as he looked down at his watch. "We're all right on time too. The hour just passed. Everyone should be waking up any second now." He looked back between the twins. "You two try to conceal yourselves for the public sight so you don't attract obvious attention. Stan and I will deal with the confusion as it arises."

Dipper and Mabel nodded understandingly at his request and quickly rushed up the steps leading into the hallway, where the two stood back and simply poked their eyes out to watch from the doorway.

The four continued to wait through a good moment of continued silence and lack of movement from any of the unconscious guests. Ford himself began to grow nervous the more time that passed, internally hoping that he didn't mess up the knockout gas formula and create something that would last much longer or have some other negative effect.

However, after another two minutes, there was finally an ounce of movement from a young man in the corner of the room. He shuffled his body around on the ground for a bit, groaning exhaustively as he finally rose, rubbing his head and eyes.

Just as Stan and Ford glanced over at him, they noticed several other guests begin to move as well. Whether from the middle of the dance floor or the sides of the room, everyone began to come to little by little.

"What the-?" Gideon claimed as he suddenly jolted awake from the middle of the dance floor.

" _Ugh...not on the rug, Mr. Catface…_ " Lazy Susan groaned as she sleepily rose up, rubbing the side of her head. As her eyes adjusted, she began to become aware of where she was. "Huh?"

"Five more minutes, Blubs…" Deputy Durland said as his head rested on top of Sheriff Blubs's stomach, moving up and down along with movements of Blubs's breathing. However, suddenly, he snorted and jolt awake, holding onto his head as his sight adjusted. "Wait...what?"

"You say something, Durly?" Blubs asked as he slowly came to as well, rising awake.

* * *

Dipper and Mabel watched as everyone slowly began to rise upwards from the floor, looking around in confusion.

"Looks like everyone's finally waking," Dipper claimed as they watched.

"Yep!" Mabel nodded. "Nice to see that all the positions I put them in are looking okay so far!"

As Dipper glanced around the room looking for familiar faces, he realized Derrick was nowhere in sight. "Hey, where'd you put Derrick at?"

"Oh, him?" Mabel questioning, putting on a grin. "Well, since you said I couldn't punch him, I decided to think of a more subtle way of getting revenge for indirectly causing all of this trouble…"

"Mabel, I swear, you better not have dumped his body in the lake…" Dipper said, beginning to grow unsettled by his sister's potential actions.

"WOAH THERE! Geez, Dipper! I don't like him, but I'm not  _that_ cruel," Mabel claimed in response to his brother jumping the gun with his assumptions. "No, I just leaned him at a certain angle over at that table over there! Just think of what a wake-up call  _that'll_ be!"

She pointed across the room beside a table, where the two twins saw Derrick unconsciously leaning against it. Every passing second, he leaned a little bit more to the side, to which he soon woke up in the middle of his leaning. As he processed what was happening, he quickly fumbled and fell right on the side of his face, to which he stayed lying flat among the ground in pain.

Dipper watched this as Mabel burst out laughing. While he never really agreed with the general idea of revenge against his friend, he was willing to accept it this one time.

"Okay, I'll let that one slide."

* * *

Back on the couch, Ryland slowly found himself waking up, groaning tiredly. He looked around and quickly saw several other people waking up and rising up as if they were just asleep a moment ago as well. Several thoughts were racing through his head, though he couldn't figure out which one to focus on.

"Ryland?"

He glanced over to his right and saw Evan wake up on the other end of the couch, rubbing his eyes.

"Evan? You too?" Ryland questioned, confused as he looked around at the everyone else as they woke up. "God, what's going on?"

* * *

Wendy's body began to lean forward slowly as she remained in her slumber. As soon as she leaned forward hard enough, she found herself jolting straight awake suddenly.

"...what?!" she asked as she looked around. She then put a hand on the side of her head, thinking about what had happened, growing incredibly confused. " _What the fu…?_ "

Beside her, she noticed a sleeping Thompson leaning forward out of his seat. At that moment, he fell onto the floor, his face planting right against the ground. The immediate impact caused him to jump awake, prompting him to hop to his feet as he stumbled around frantically.

"GAH! DIPPER, I'LL KILL YOU!" he exclaimed as he got into a defensive stance, but quickly realized where he was and noticed his surroundings, quickly growing confused. "Wait...what?"

"Thompson?" Wendy asked as her eyes glanced over at him, not sure where he had come from.

"Wendy!" Thompson said, face going red upon noticing her right behind him.

"God, what just happened?" Tambry's voice interrupted as she found herself waking up a moment ago as well. She quickly heard a snoring in her ear, to which she turned and noticed Robbie sleeping away right beside her in his seat. "Robbie, wake up!"

" _Hmm...what?_ " Robbie questioned as he found himself casually waking up. He then looked around, rubbing his head in confusion.

Wendy glanced to the side, noticing that Lee and Nate were still asleep. "Lee! Nate!"

The two groaned as they immediately woke up on call. They quickly glanced around the room and their peers and were barely able to process what was happening either.

"Did...everyone just wake up?" Lee asked as he scratched his head.

"Dude, I have absolutely no idea about anything anymore," Wendy admitted she rubbed her eyes.

* * *

"Huh?" Melody asked as she woke up, surprised to find herself on the floor. Her head then turned to look over at Soos, who sat at the DJ stand, head laid on top, drooling as he slept. "Soos?"

"GAH! UBER THRASH BROS ULTIMATE COMES OUT IN 2018!" Soos stammered as he bounced up from his seat in panic.

"Wait, does it?!" Melody asked, eyes bulging in near-excitement at this claim.

"I don't know…" Soos admitted, scratching his head curiously as he tried to think about it. But he found himself confused as he realized he was right in front of his DJ stand. "Wait...what just happened?"

He then turned his head, looking over his DJ booth to see Stan and Ford walking up to him and into his booth.

"Mr. Pines? Mr. Pines Number Two?" he asked, still trying to readjust from his sleep. However, from what he was able to recall at that moment, he thought the two had walked out on the party.

"Ford, son. You could just say Ford," Ford reminded him for the second time that day.

"Right. Sorry," Soos apologised, recalling that claim. "It's just...I kinda just woke up. Or, at least, I think I just did. I really don't know anymore…"

"Soos, can we borrow the microphone you use here so we can make an announcement?" Stan asked, gesturing over to the microphone at the stand in the middle of the booth.

"Oh, uh, yeah. Sure," Soos accepted as he walked over to the microphone, quickly flicking some switches at the booth before handing it over to them.

Ford took the microphone in his hand and tapped on the top a few times to check if it worked, which it did, as proved by the taps amplified through the speakers. This grabbed the attention of just about every single guest, who all looked up at Stan and Ford at the booth.

"Hello? Is this thing on?" Ford spoke into the microphone as one final test. Assured that it was working, he nodded. "Good. Anyways, good evening, everybody. I'm sure several of you are very confused as to what had just happened and why you all suddenly find yourselves scattered throughout the room after awakening from a supposed unexpected slumber. Well, I can provide a very simple explanation for this..."

There was a moment of silence as Ford realized he didn't have an excuse very well prepared, which was the last thing they needed for this plan to have been successful. However, as he tried to think about it, he continued to struggle to find something believable and easy to accept. This caused him to start panicking internally.

"You see...um…" he began to stall, following with another brief silence. Several eyebrows throughout the room raised as he continued to delay his answer. "The honest answer...if I were to give it...would be...uh…"

Dipper and Mabel continued to watch everything unfold from the hallway. Though they were able to quickly realize that Ford didn't know what to say and that he was stalling. They started to grow nervous themselves, hoping he wouldn't ruin everything they've worked for up to that point.

"C'mon, Grunkle Ford!" Dipper whispered hopefully to themselves, clenching his fists nervously.

"I feel it would be best to explain things in a simple manner…" Ford continued to stall, his forehead beginning to balm with sweat. "...which...would...be…"

Tired of his stalling and stuttering, Stan quickly grabbed the mic away from Ford and confidently held it up to his own mouth. "I'll tell you what happened! You party people got so crazy with those drinks of yours that you all fell asleep!" he made up, which prompted everyone to start weirdly looking around at one another. "That's right! Every single one of you! Don't believe me? Well...I mean...you all were just asleep a moment ago, and so I feel that's enough proof to show!"

"Um...but none of the drinks you set up were alcoholic!" a teenager pointed out from beside the drink table.

Stan processed this for a minute, trying to figure out how to address the teen's point. "Well, duh! You think that's what I meant? There's a lot of sugar in those sodas and...err...that punch! I mean, c'mon! Didn't your mothers ever tell you people when you were young not to have so much sugar or else you'd get a sugar rush?"

"But I never even had a drink!" another teen raised their hand from the middle of the crowd.

"Sugar rush is contagious!" Stan added with the snap of his fingers. "And instantaneous!"

The teen remained quiet for a moment as he processed this explanation. "Huh. Guess you learn something new every day."

Several partygoers around the room nodded and murmured in agreement, which seemed to imply that they were all buying Stan's excuse. Ford looked over at Stan in disbelief that his obviously fake excuse was actually working. Dipper and Mabel smiled from the hallway, glancing over at one another hopefully at how things were looking to turn out.

"Now luckily, sugar rush doesn't come with as bad of a hangover...unless you're my great niece…" Stan continued. "Which means that all of you are going to be okay! And also, none of this is on us, so don't think about suing! And also, just about everything you remember from the last hour or so when you were conscious was all a dream!" He paused for a moment to let everything he said set in. "Anyways, you all can resume partying as normal! Hit it, Soos!" he said as he turned to Soos, putting a hand over the microphone to cover it as he leaned over and whispered into his ear. "Before any of these morons ask any questions!"

"I have so many questions right now too, but whatever you say, Mr. Pines!" Soos shrugged off as he leaned a hand over to his computer and began playing a track through the speakers.

As the music began to play again, nearly everyone stood still on the dance floor, still trying to process everything they had just been told. But soon enough, they began to just brush off their confusion and resume dancing again.

"I still got it," Stan claimed as he placed the microphone down, happy he hasn't lost his touch in the ability to tell good lies and sell them.

"Sweet Moses…" Ford said in disbelief as he watched everyone slowly begin to go back to normal as if nothing had happened. "I can't believe that actually...worked!"

"What have I been telling ya, Poindexter?" Stan asked as he crossed his arms. "The people in this town are idiots. I can name only a few people who are capable of reading past such an obvious lie."

"Who might those be?" Ford asked.

"I don't know," Stan admitted as he tried to think about it. "Eh. It's probably not important."

* * *

Robbie sat beside Tambry, still trying to process the things that Stan had claimed over the microphone. "So the last hour I remember was a dream?" he asked himself. "Thank god. I was about to freak out for a second, thinking that somehow I had actually gotten a crush on that stupid Pines kid."

"You too?" Tambry asked, eyes widening in disbelief.

"Wait, you had the same dream?" Robbie asked, eyes also widening. "How…?"

"Great pairs think alike," Wendy claimed casually from beside the two as she overheard their conversation.

"Maybe she's right," Tambry said as she smiled over at Robbie.

"Yeah, maybe…" Robbie claimed as he smiled back at her. "Hey, you wanna make out for a bit? After that dream, I think it'd be a good reminder of how much I really value our relationship."

"Agreed," Tambry nodded as she wrapped her arms around Robbie's neck, the two proceeded to lock lips with one another.

"Alright, I think I could've gone without seeing that," Wendy claimed as she looked away from the two, putting a hand up to shield her peripheral vision from being able to see them either.

As she looked down, however, she thought over the whole 'dream' thing and how she caught that Robbie and Tambry had 'dreamed' the same thing that she had. She didn't want to chime in sharing the same thoughts and simply said another thing to kinda throw them off the idea and move on. But while she wasn't sure enough of what had really happened, she wasn't stupid enough to fall for what was clearly one of Stan's lies.

It was at that moment that she looked up and noticed Dipper and Mabel walk down from the floor room stairs. They gave one another a thumbs-up before heading in separate directions. That said everything to her.

Something  _had_ happened.

* * *

Dipper made his way over across the dance floor and approached Derrick, who was rubbing the side of his face he fell on earlier.

"What's up with you?" Dipper asked as he approached him, pretending not to know.

Derrick turned to him and realized who he was. He gave him an odd look as he recalled what had happened in his supposed dream, but tried to dismiss it. "Uh...fell on my face." He then looked at his appearance. "What happened to your hoodie?"

"Don't worry about it. I'm gonna get a new one tomorrow or something," Dipper quickly brushed off.

" _Riiight_ ," Derrick simply accepted as he continued to rub the side of his face. "Anyways, what exactly just happened? Did everyone here seriously pass out because of a sugar rush?"

"Something like that," Dipper shrugged off.

"I don't even remember having a drink today," Derrick said as he tried to recall if he had. "I don't know. Maybe I did. I'm just so confused right now. Like I'm torn between what's real and what's not."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I won't go into too much detail because things get... _substantially_  weird…" Derrick mentioned as he thought about his 'dream'. "But I thought we had already met up before. And I thought we were looking for...cologne...or something. I don't know. Everything just gets weird after that."

"Cologne? Pfft…" Dipper faked a laugh as he heard this. "Yeah, man. You were totally dreaming alright. I don't think I've ever worn cologne before in my life!"

"Huh…" Derrick said as he scratched his head. "Weird, because I had figured that you needed it before. Though that might've been my idea..."

"Well, it must've been a pretty stupid idea," Dipper told him.

"The more I think about it, it probably was..." Derrick told him as he dragged his hands down the sides of his face tiredly, which made him wince due to the pain on one side. "Yeah, this hurts."

"There's an ice pack in the kitchen freezer if you want," Dipper suggested.

"I'll go check that out," Derrick nodded as he began to walk off. "Thanks."

"No problem, man," Dipper said, before coming up with a final idea of what to say. "Don't forget! We're the  _best of bros!_ "

Derrick stopped in place to turn back to him, giving him a weirded out look. "Alright, do us both a favor and never call us that ever again."

"Gotcha," Dipper nodded with an amused smirk, knowing for sure now that his best friend truly had been reverted back to normal.

"Yo, Dipper," a familiar voice called out to him from behind.

He turned around and his eyes bulged, immediately growing nervous and feeling a wave of awkwardness overcome him. "Oh...uh...hey, Wendy! What's up?"

"I honestly have no idea anymore," she admitted as she stopped in front of him, folding her arms. "But I ain't really buying Stan's whole sugar rush deal and neither would anyone else with a brain."

"Really?" Dipper asked, beginning to feel his nervous sweats start to form as he had a feeling he knew where she was going with things.

"C'mon, man," Wendy said with a slightly amused smile as she playfully punched him in the shoulder. "I've worked for Stan. I know a lie from him when I hear one. You guys are the tight family who tell each other everything. What was the real reason everyone here got knocked out?"

"Uh, can't say! Guess it's just another mystery, huh? Heheh…" Dipper chuckled as he tried to play dumb in front of her.

It wasn't working though. Wendy knew that he knew she was smarter than that and just stared on at him, only raising an eyebrow when he tried to cover it up.

"Dude, you know I'm not dumb," Wendy told him, her smile fading. "I'm not trying to get you in trouble or anything. I just wanna know the truth. I won't tell anybody else."

Dipper sighed, realizing he had to be as upfront with her as possible in order to satisfy her wants. However, at the same time, he couldn't imagine how she'd think of him if she knew that the whole love-potion-cologne incident had actually happened and that she had actually come close to kissing him. The fact was that she wanted to know what caused everyone to blackout. She didn't seem to question him on the crush or the near-kiss.

Perhaps he was being too paranoid and she'd be chill with the idea once she knew it was because she unintentionally under an influence. But at the same time, their friendship and views of one another wasn't something he was willing to jeopardize. They had already dealt with these types of feelings four years ago, and he wasn't going to take this as a chance to come digging them back up again.

He sighed. "The truth is...one of Ford's lab experiments accidentally made it into the punch and we didn't find until later after everyone started acting weird. You, Ryland, Soos, Melody, and pretty much everyone else who had any punch then blacked out and as an excuse, Stan decided to pin the whole thing as a sugar-rush rather than a wrong and potentially dangerous ingredient. Luckily, the ingredient needs to be drunk in large dosages, so it's safe to say you and everyone else are going to be alright. And anyone who got affected but didn't drink the punch must've been affected by one of the surrounding gases expelled from those who have drunk it."

Wendy stared at him for a second, processing everything he had told her. "That's what really happened?"

Dipper silently nodded, continuing to feel his nervous sweats develop.

After a brief moment, Wendy smiled and looked up, shaking her head. "Freakin' Ford, man. I'm telling you. If anyone is gonna get us all killed one of these days, it's gonna be either him or Stan. Maybe Bill isn't even the real enemy after all," she joked, lightly chuckling.

Dipper chuckled along with her, hoping it meant that he was in the clear. "Right…"

"But, really. Thanks for telling the truth," Wendy said as she looked on at him. "Again, I won't tell anybody. It's just nice to know that there's some honesty to be had around here."

The more she went on, the guiltier Dipper began to feel. "Yep. Of course. Anything for a friend…"

" _Ehem!_ "

Dipper and Wendy both then turned to the side where they both saw Thompson, who stood approaching Wendy with something behind his back. He looked slightly nervous as he walked up to her.

"Oh, hey Thompson," she greeted casually. "What's up?"

"Yo, Wendy," Thompson greeted back, trying to maintain his deep, suave voice as opposed to the raspy voice he possessed when confronting Dipper earlier. He shook a little bit as he cleared his throat. "You know, since you're going away soon, I decided to get you these..." he said as he pulled the bouquet of flowers from behind his back and held it out in front of her. "...as a going-away gift."

Wendy's eyes bulged as she looked on at the flowers, but not in a good way. As he held them out to her, she promptly took a few steps back, placing herself behind Dipper and using him as a defense. "Uh...Thompson?! The gesture is sweet...but those are Crossfires!"

"Y-yeah, they are," Thompson said, glancing back and forth between her and the flowers, appearing confused as to why she reacted the way she did. "I thought you said you liked Crossfire Tulips! At the cemetery!"

"No, Thompson...I said I was  _allergic_ to Crossfire Tulips!" Wendy clarified to him as she walked backward a few steps, pulling Dipper along with her to keep shielding herself.

"Oh, crap!" Thompson shouted, panicking as she told him this.

He proceeded to chuck the bouquet of flowers aimlessly across the floor room, just trying to dispose of it as quickly as he could. He then looked back at Wendy who slowly proceeded to stop hiding behind Dipper after the flowers were gone.

"I'm...I'm so sorry, Wendy," Thompson apologized, face as red as can be. "I must have misheard or wasn't paying attention or...or...something!"

"It's cool, Thompson," Wendy assured him as she stepped out from behind Dipper. "I mean, you meant well, at least…"

"Right," Thompson nodded embarrassedly as he scratched the back of his head. "Well, I'm just gonna go to the snack table and...eat a lot…" he said as he proceeded to walk away awkwardly from the two without another word.

Dipper and Wendy watched him walk off, both of them feeling bad for him. Though Dipper felt much worse, having known what Thompson had gone through and how he felt. Sure, he may have gotten aggressive towards him before when he thought he kissed Wendy, but the thought that Thompson had been through so much and worked so hard for so long only to have his moment ripped away from him again by fate just made it hard not to feel for him.

Ultimately, as much as he would spend more time feeling bad for Thompson, there was something else about his interaction with Wendy that had stuck out to him.

"Wait, what did he mean when he said you were going away soon?" Dipper asked as he turned to her. As he asked this question, he could see Wendy scrunch her face up, as if he had just busted her for something she had been trying to keep secret. "Wendy…?"

"Guess it's my turn to be the honest one, huh?" Wendy asked with a guilty smile. "Look, I just wanted to say that I was planning to tell you and Mabel about this sooner but…"

"You're leaving?" Dipper asked, his face displaying disbelief.

Wendy stared at him for a moment before letting out a mellow sigh. "I'm moving about two hours north from Gravity Falls for college at the end of the month."

"For college?" Dipper asked. "But, I thought you were already going to college locally!"

"I got expelled," Wendy admitted, beginning to feel terrible as she revealed this information to him.

"Expelled?! How?" Dipper asked, each new revelation shocking him further.

"Look, man, I don't really feel like getting into it that deeply," she told him calmly as she placed her hands on his shoulders. "And trust me, I know this is a lot to take in and that I should've told both you and your sister about this long before and I know I still have a lot to answer for and trust me, eventually, I'll just lay it all down for you guys. It's just...things have been hard lately, and while we're here at this party with my friends and stuff, I'd just rather not start getting too personal about this stuff right now, if you know what I mean."

"I understand," Dipper nodded, still trying to process everything. "But I just...you're really leaving Gravity Falls at the end of the month? We really won't get to see you again for the rest of the summer?"

"C'mon, man, don't think like that," Wendy tried to tell him positively. "I'm only gonna be about two hours away, and while that's not close enough for constant visits, it doesn't make seeing each other again  _impossible_. After I'm settled in over there, I'll probably drop by occasionally for weekends and stuff. And I mean, we just found out this morning that Soos and Melody are getting  _married_ next month. You think that I'm gonna miss something like that?"

Dipper thought it over, looking over to the side. "I mean, I guess not, but…"

"It won't be goodbye, man," Wendy assured him as she placed a finger on the side of his chin to turn his head back to her. "It won't. And we still got more than a week until the month ends. If there's ever an adventure for us to go on or a time for us to hang out between now and then, then we'll just take it. Simple as that."

"But…"

"All that matters now is that we make the rest of the summer count," Wendy tried to further assure him. "As best as we can."

Dipper knew the point she was trying to make but still couldn't fathom the idea that she was actually going away soon. The questions he had but knew he couldn't ask yet just continued to lurk around his mind and it made him feel weak.

But for Wendy, he had to stay strong. She didn't want to make a big deal out of things right now and told him that there would come a better time for questions. And so until that time comes, he had to follow what she told him.

Make the rest of the summer count as best as they could.

He finally smiled back at her. "Okay," he nodded, which prompted a smile back from her.

* * *

Mabel quickly ran to the side of the floor room and saw the couch where Ryland sat at. He still appeared confused as to what had just happened and simply sat there talking to Evan. She knew that their last encounter involved him finding out her feelings for him, but his feelings were disrupted by the sudden scent of Dipper's love-cologne, and so she still had yet to figure out what he thought of her. Or even if he was thinking about her confession.

Either way, she was there to amend whatever problems she needed to. She took a deep breath and exhaled before making her way over to him.

"Ryland?" she asked as she stood in front of him and Evan.

Ryland's eyes bulged slightly. "Oh...uh...hey, Mabel." He glanced over at his little brother and gave him a look. As Evan received this look, he glanced back and forth between him and her once before walking away.

Now it was just the two of them. Mabel didn't know what he knew or what he was thinking, nor did she know how to propel the conversation forward. So she decided to just ask something that she wanted to be clear about.

"Hey! Uh...quick random question…" she began as she sat next to him, though a comfortable distance away. "How do you feel about my brother?"

Ryland didn't appear to expect this question. "Uh, Dipper? He's, uh, cool, I guess."

"Just cool?" Mabel asked, proceeding to look at him interrogatively. "You don't harbor any  _other_ feelings?"

"Uhh...no…?" Ryland assured, glancing around curiously. "I hope not, at least…"

"Phew! Well, that's good," Mabel said, relieved.

"I guess?" Ryland asked, confused by the general question. "Anyways, uh, is there any chance we could talk about this whole crush thing?

" _Pfft...what crush?_ " Mabel pretended to not know what he was talking about but felt her face reddening as he asked this.

"Huh, maybe that was all just part of the dream anyway…" Ryland realized as he thought over her response.

"D-dream?" Mabel asked.

"Ah, it's nothing," Ryland assured her. "Just having a hard time trying to come to terms with what was real and what was a dream over the past hour or so. I thought that maybe this moment where you said you had a-"

He stopped and looked over at her, to which he figured he'd be making a mistake by mentioning what he was about to mention.

However, as Mabel looked back at him, she realized that Dipper was right. She was making a mistake by not coming clean now. She had a chance now to talk over things and get any feelings between them resolved. If she hid them yet again, it would be an entire situation for another day. And she didn't want to keep chasing after something for too long if there wasn't really anything to find.

"You know what? Nevermind," he brushed off. "It's not important. Anyways-"

"Wait!" Mabel cut off, covering her face with her hands out of embarrassment. "I lied! I knew what you were talking about! It wasn't apart of the dream!"

"Wait, what?"

She sighed as she looked down and rubbed her arm awkwardly. "Ryland...I  _do_  like you."

Ryland's eyes bulged widely as she told him this. "Oh...then why…"

"I just didn't want to risk ruining the friendship we already made these past few weeks if you didn't feel the same," Mabel explained to him. "I was gonna tell you at some point. Just...not like this."

Ryland stared at her, trying to figure out how to respond. "I...uh...I gotcha."

She caught his expression and his tone and immediately began to grow even more embarrassed with herself. She turned away from him entirely as she sighed. "Look, I see that you don't feel the same. So can we just forget that this ever happened and just...try to keep things how they were before?"

"What?" Ryland asked, raising an eyebrow. "No, I'm just trying to process everything right now. I mean, this is like...kind of a lot to take in for me.

"Oh…" Mabel said sadly, still too embarrassed to face him.

"Yeah, so I don't know…" Ryland said as he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, his face beginning to redden slightly. "Maybe if you don't have plans for the rest of the night, we could do something?"

Mabel's eyes bulged, the response not at all what she was expecting. She could feel her face burning with red as she turned back to him. "W-what? You mean like a date?"

Ryland continued to smile awkwardly as he continued to rub the back of his neck. "I guess. I've never planned one last minute though, but I mean, it is a night, so…"

"I'd...I'd love to!" she told him as she began to smile widely at him.

However, her smile disappeared as she suddenly looked over his shoulder and right past him. In the back of the room, away from most of the other partygoers, she spotted Stan and Ford hanging out on their own, talking with one another.

She had just been asked out by the guy she had been crushing on since arriving to Gravity Falls. Going on a date that night meant ditching the party and going out to do their own things. While she was thrilled to finally have that opportunity with Ryland, she knew what was more important at that moment.

"...but I'm going to have to say no to tonight," Mabel finished, giving him an apologetic smile. "I already made plans to spend it with my Grunkles."

"Oh, I gotcha," Ryland said with an understanding nod.

"But we can go on Monday!" Mabel offered. "Gives you tomorrow to plan!"

Ryland smiled. "Sounds good. Monday it is."

"Great," she told him with a warm smile.

She proceeded to look over his shoulder and back at her great uncles, ensuring they were still where they were. Ryland caught her glance and turned to look behind her, immediately understanding what she was looking at.

"I know we're kinda having a moment now, but, um, you don't mind if I…?" Mabel began.

"No, of course not!" Ryland assured her, standing up from the couch and gesturing for her to go right on ahead. "They're your family. Who am I to tell you otherwise?"

"Cool!" she said as she stood up from the couch and began making her way over to them. She gave him one final glance, catching him as he tried to glance away from her. This caused her to blush once more before she gave him a final wave. "Well, see you Monday."

"Right," he nodded at her as he waved back. "Monday."

As Mabel walked off a good distance away, she found herself suddenly embraced in a power hug.

" _EEEEE!_ " Grenda and Candy excitedly shrieked in her ears as they hugged her tightly.

"Mabel! Ryland just asked you out!" Candy exclaimed happily for her.

"THIS IS SO  _EXCITING!_ " Grenda shouted with a wide smile. "I'm still like...really confused as to why we were all sleeping a few minutes ago, BUT I'M STILL SO HAPPY FOR YOU!"

"Aw, you guys are the best!" Mabel said as she wrapped her own arms around the two.

"Do you know what you're going to wear yet?" Grenda asked.

"He didn't say where he was going to take you, did he?" Candy asked further.

"WE NEED DETAILS!" Grenda demanded.

"Girls, girls! I know you two are excited and trust me, I am too!" Mabel assured them as she tried to calm them down. "But maybe we can catch up on all this and more another time?"

"We can have a sleepover at my place tomorrow!" Grenda suggested. "We can spend the night catching up, watching movies, reading romance novels, and making dresses for your date!"

"That sounds perfect!" Mabel nodded enthusiastically at the idea. "We'll catch up on everything tomorrow. But for now, I need to be a Mabel in two grunkles' lives."

"Aw, okay," Grenda and Candy said somewhat glumly as they watched her continue to walk off in the direction of the Stan twins. Though they still remained enthused by the idea that they'd all meet up again the next day for a sleepover.

" _Ehem!_ "

The two girls turned to the side only to see Evan casually standing right next to them, particularly beside Candy. He appeared to face away from them, but he was clearly meaning to grab their attention.

" _Oh, boy…_ " Candy said unenthusiastically as Grenda began to grin amusedly right beside her.

* * *

"Well, it looks like everything is back to normal around here," Ford said as he stood beside Stan, eyes looking around the room to see everybody acting normally again. He patted the side of his jacket, where he felt the cologne was still secure inside. "I guess the only thing I have left to do is dispose of this cologne to ensure this doesn't become a problem to any of us ever again."

"Yeah, and while you're at it, maybe put better warning labels on those other experiments of yours," Stan suggested. "I know it was the kid's fault for going into the basement and touching around at things he didn't know about, but it probably would've helped if there was a better warning on those things."

"True," Ford agreed. "I suppose I could take all of this into account when I finish cleaning up the lab. Dispose of all the old experiments I don't need anymore. Make warning labels for the things I still do need." He sighed. "It'll certainly be a trip going down memory lane, that's for sure. I remember working on a bulk of those experiments with Fiddleford. I wonder how he's holding up nowadays."

"Well, old friend," a familiar southern voice spoke up from behind him. "Aside from the occasional tick in the ol' noggin, I'd say I'm holdin' up mighty fine."

"My God...do my eyes deceive me?" Ford asked as he was greeted by the sight of his old friend. "Fiddleford H. McGucket?"

"Stanford F. Pines," Fiddleford greeted happily as he walked up to him with a knob-handle cane to aid him. He held out his hand for him to shake. "It's good to see you again, ol' friend."

"Good to see me?" Ford questioned as he shook his hand, looking down at his appearance. "It's good to see  _you!_ God, F! You look far better now than you did the last time we spoke! Err, no offense..."

Compared to the old man with a scarecrow's hat and suspenders that he had met again four years ago, Fiddleford looked to be almost a completely different man. No longer did he don brown suspenders, but a fancy brown suit and tie, very akin to the one he wore during his younger days. He had also gotten rid of his hat, cleaned up his long, white beard, and also managed to finally put on some shoes. An old man he still looked, but he also looked much healthier and much happier.

"None taken," Fiddleford dismissed, holding up his hand. "You're absolutely right anyway. I'm far better nowadays than when we last met. Submitting all those ol' blueprints to the government brought me this new life. And because it was your idea, I owe it all to you."

"Ah, it's nothing," Ford brushed off. "What kind of friend would I be not to aid one of the smartest minds I know? Especially after what I'd done to him so long ago?"

"Ah, Ford. Always so hard on yourself," Fiddleford shook his head at Ford's humbleness. "What have I told ya? It's water under the bridge! I'm tellin' ya, if ya ever need anythin' from me, I'd be more than happy to oblige."

Ford glanced to the side, rubbing his chin as he thought of this. He then proceeded to walk up to him, smiling as he placed a hand on his back, guiding him away from Stan. "Well, now that I think about it, perhaps, there is a matter we can discuss."

"Right, I'll just stick right here…on my own…" Stan claimed as his brother walked off with Fiddleford away from him.

"We'll be just a moment, Stanley," Ford assured him as he looked back at him for a quick moment. Once he and Fiddleford were a good distance away from most people to talk privately, he stopped them in place. "So, Fiddleford, what brings you around here on such an evening?"

"Well, I found an invite at the front of the mansion this morning for this here welcome home party for you and your brother. I figured it's been four years. What kind of friend would I be not to drop by and say hello after so long?" Fiddleford explained. "Though I got the time wrong and only just arrived here a few minutes ago, so apologies if I'm missed the main event."

"No, trust me. You didn't miss anything," Ford assured him with an amused chuckle. "Anyway, how's that brilliant mind of yours holding up after all this time?"

"The screws tend to go loose every now and then," Fiddleford admitted as he rubbed the side of his head. "But besides that, I'd be darned not to say that my memory's almost completely regressed!"

"That's good to hear..." Ford said as his tone suddenly became serious, smile fading away into a stern expression. "...because, old friend, I'm afraid we have a dangerous situation ahead of us for which that brilliance is really gonna need to come to use."

"Huh? What're you talkin' about?" Fiddleford questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm going to tell you what," Ford assured him, placing a hand on his shoulder as he carefully glanced around the room to ensure no one was watching them. "But I need to know that you're mentally prepared for it. For I'm afraid of how you might react when you hear this disastrous new revelation."

"Ford, in the past four years since you departed from Gravity Falls, I've been 'round to some of the highest government facilities in the country. I've seen and heard plenty that I wish I hadn't, yet I've managed to resist all urge to ever use that blasted memory gun again," Fiddleford explained to him. "Trust me. Whatever you have to tell me, I promise I can handle."

Ford accepted his assurance and sighed preparedly. "Bill Cipher has returned."

" _SWEET CORN SYRUP ON A BARBEQUED BANJO!_ " Fiddleford shouted fearfully, appearing to regress into his previously psychotic state of mind, doing a slight jig as he freaked out. " _THE WORLD IS DOOOOOMED!_ "

He proceeded to give himself a quick, yet firm slap in the face, which seemed to knock himself out of it.

"SORRY...sorry!" Fiddleford apologized as he straightened himself out, trying to calm himself down. "I'm still working on that. Sorry." He cleared his throat. "Anyways, what do you mean Bill Cipher has returned?"

"It's a long story, but to explain the current crisis at hand, Bill has taken shelter within the corner of Stan's mind, with the capability to pop up and take control whenever he's at full strength," Ford explained. "We encountered him yesterday and were able to subdue him and get Stan to regain control, but Bill still lurks within him."

"I see," McGucket nodded understandingly as he listened.

"That's about where we're at here," Ford concluded. "Now we need to find another way to remove Bill from Stan's mind and destroy him once and for all. That, however, I can't say I have much idea how to do. Considering erasing Stan's entire memory didn't work, I'm unsure what else can be done."

McGucket thought for a solid moment, rubbing his chin. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers as he came up with something. "I think I have an idea! Remember that weapon you told me you had constructed during your trips through the portal? The one you were initially gonna use against Bill?"

"The Quantum Destabilizer?" Ford asked, realizing what he was referring to. "That thing is a super-powered, radioactive death-ray! I'm just trying to wipe Bill from Stan's mind, F."

"I understand that," Fiddleford nodded assuringly. "But what if we channel the weapon in a way so it links to the mind? Similarly to how I designed the memory gun. Reprogram it as the death ray against demons and other creatures hidden within the human mind!"

"It's an interesting concept," Ford admitted. "But I already used the last bit of charge stored on it. And the element I used to power it can only be found in another dimension."

"You also told me that the element was needed for maximum power in order to blast creatures like Bill out of existence!" Fiddleford reminded him. "But Bill ain't at his maximum power when he's cramped up in a normal body he doesn't have complete control over! Therefore, we don't need some interdimensional super element! We just need something capable of providin' enough power to give the slightest bit of charge! We're not trying to annihilate your brother, are we?" he asked with a light chuckle. "Unless you  _want to_  that is…"

"No! No, I don't want to do that," Ford chuckled at his twisted little joke. "Alright, I guess I see where you're coming from. The only thing is I left the Destabilizer in the old underground bunker because I figured it might've been too dangerous to keep around the Shack, even if it was drained. So I'll have to go back down there and retrieve it one of these days."

"We can go there together!" McGucket suggested. "I've actually been down into the bunker several times over the past few years, makin' adjustments and fixes to the layout and such. While we look for the Destabilizer, I can also show you what I've been up to down there!"

"Sounds like a plan," Ford nodded at the idea. "We can go tomorrow."

"Actually, I'm gonna have to leave in a second here for a trip back to Area 51. Tomorrow, I gotta help them fix a malfunction they made to the death ray I gave them  _step-by-step_  schematics for," he told him while giving an annoyed facepalm at the thought. "This darn country...anyway, we can go down to the bunker on Monday instead."

"Monday it is, then," Ford said as he offered his hand for McGucket to shake, which he did.

McGucket then looked down at his wristwatch, realizing it was time for him to leave. He proceeded to walk off with his cane. "Welp. I'll see you Monday, Ford. The chopper's waiting outside."

"Good luck, Fiddleford!" Ford waved at him. "It was a pleasure to see you again!"

With everything said and done, Ford proceeded to walk back over to his brother, where he saw Dipper and Mabel standing right beside him. They all watched as he approached, to which he looked surprised to see the two there with them.

Dipper pointed over in the direction McGucket head in curiously. "Was that...McGucket?"

"He looks so  _spiffy_  now!" Mabel exclaimed, realizing how much cleaner he looked now.

"Yes, he just dropped by to say hello," Ford briefly summed up. "Nevermind that, though. What are you two doing here? I thought you were handling your own personal businesses."

"Well, I finished clearing things up with Wendy and Derrick," Dipper replied as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Making sure neither of them really wanted to date me anymore."

"Meanwhile, this girl's got herself a date!" Mabel exclaimed happily as she pointed two thumbs at herself.

Stan had taken a sip from a cup of water he held in his hand and proceeded to do a spit take as he heard this. "Say what?!"

"Yeah, but that's another day!" she clarified as she proceeded to hug the Stan. "Today, we celebrate the best grunkles in the world and their return to Gravity Falls!"

"Geez, kid," Stan said with a hearty chuckle. "Don't you ever get tired of hugging?"

"Nope!" Mabel shook her head as she pressed it against Stan's chest.

"Well, I do," Stan claimed, before proceeding to place an arm around her anyway. "But I'll make one last exception."

"You kids are too kind," Ford said with a warm smile. "It's moments like these that we missed most about coming home." Suddenly, a thought came back to mind. "On an unrelated note, however, I have to ask: despite how critical it was to our success, did anybody else wonder earlier how we were the only ones that couldn't be affected by the cologne's influence?"

"Honestly, I choose not to wonder about that," Stan claimed, disgusted by the idea of being affected by the potion himself.

"I mean, the family part of me does too," Ford agreed. "But the researcher part of me honestly remains somewhat curious."

"Well, tell the researcher part of you to tone it the hell down," Stan replied bitterly.

"Maybe the reason it didn't affect us is because we're family and we already love each other!" Mabel suggested as she wrapped her arms around everybody, bringing everyone close together. "And no love potion is stronger than the power of natural love!"

"That's sweet, kid," Stan told her, smiling warmly. "Incredibly corny, but sweet."

"Oh, you want incredibly corny?" Mabel asked as she stood back, giving the three daring smiles. "In that case, I think it's time to bring a certain band back for a reunion tour…"

"Sev'ral Timez?" Dipper questioned, not knowing what band she could be talking about.

"Try all you want, sweetie, but you're never gonna pull those beautiful men away from those trees," Stan told her bluntly.

"Oh, that's not the band I was thinking of…" she said as she slowly pulled up a purple book in her hands. The cover displayed a picture of a microphone and the title:  _Karaoke Songs_. Right away, Dipper and Stan's eyes both narrowed at the sight of the book, while Ford just looked on in confusion.

"Aw, son of a…"

* * *

_June 18th, 2016_

_Today was...an interesting day, to say the least._

_Just in case anyone other than Mabel or my Great Uncles get their hands on this book, I won't be going into much detail on what really happened. But let's just say as a future reminder:_ _NEVER_   _let anyone convince you to go into Great Uncle Ford's lab and touch any of his things that you don't know about._

_Anyways, aside from most of the craziness that went on today, there was a lot of good to be had. Mabel threw a welcome-home party for Stan and Ford and while things started off rocky, I'm happy to say things ended really well. She forced us all to band together, bringing back a group she named 'Love Patrol Alpha' (which is a terrible name by the way) and had us all sing karaoke, which felt more pressuring this time considering it wasn't done in front of a bunch of lifeless zombies._

_Still though, after the first song, we had pretty much just let loose and had a good time. Just us Pines. Once most people had gone home, we spent the rest of the evening in the living room listening to Stan and Ford telling us about some of the adventures they went on when traveling the world. Of course, when it comes to Stan telling a story, it's hard to tell what's legit and what isn't, but I was willing to take most of it for granted anyway (as cool as most of their adventures sounded, it didn't sound like anything much crazier than what we've faced before)._

_In general, it was good to catch up with them after so long and just be a family again. While being around friends like Soos and Wendy again is awesome, our great uncles definitely filled a hole that had been missing these past few weeks since summer began, and I'm definitely thankful to have them here again._

_While I mentioned Wendy, some not-so-great news I learned is that she'll be leaving Gravity Falls at the end of the month. She hasn't given too many details, but she doesn't seem anymore thrilled about it than I am. Despite some...awkward encounters today...I still see Wendy is a close friend and a big part of the excitement I had in returning to Gravity Falls. She says that she'd come back occasionally, and of course, there's video chat and stuff. But still, knowing that she won't even be around for the entire summer definitely took some time to take in. We've barely even hung out that often these past few weeks anyway._

_At least now, I know for sure that whatever adventure comes up, if I can get Wendy in on it, I will. As she told me, it's all about making these last few days that she's around count. And that's what I intend to do._

_Oh, and even though this doesn't really apply to me, Mabel wanted me to write down that Ryland asked her out today. Something about wanting to make sure the day doesn't go forgotten among the other days they'll share like his proposal or their wedding. Someone should probably tell her not to jump the gun like that, but she's too happy to let anybody rain on her parade, so I'm just not gonna bother._

_And now she's poking fun at me for voluntarily dancing with Wendy when she was crazy for me. She doesn't know what she's talking about. I dropped my feelings for Wendy years ago! Why else would I drop out of a chance to kiss her?_

…

_I really need to stop writing these things in pen._

* * *

 

_NI KZIZMLRW URMWH OLEV HLNV WZB_

_ZMW GSV SVZIGYIVZPVI DROO OVZW GSV DZB_

_GSV LOW LMV DROO HVZO SRH UZGV_

_ZMW NI HRCVI DROO YV GLL OZGV_


	30. Back to the Bunker: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dipper, Ford, and the gang return to the bunker to locate an old weapon, but run into an old enemy in the process.   
> Meanwhile, Mabel goes on her first date with Ryland. However, an uninvited guest plans on getting in the way.

"Steady… _steady…_ "

Derrick stood in the center of the Mystery Shack gift shop holding an eyeball between his fingers. He held it close up to his shut right eye as he focused his sights through his left eye. Across from him were three shelves stacked above one another with three differently sized Mystery Shack cups and mugs spread out amongst each shelf.

After a moment of aiming, he threw the eyeball against the floor, bouncing it upwards toward the shelves. With one bounce, it had gone high enough in the air in order to perfectly land within the rightmost mug on the top shelf.

"Haha! Yes!" he exclaimed as he threw his fist in the air triumphantly. He then turned behind him, where both Dipper and Wendy had sat at the register counter. He marched up to Dipper, pointing his finger at him. "Eat it, Dipper! That was a clean shot and you know it!"

"Yeah, it was. Nice one," Dipper nodded in agreement with a grin. He then took out a small notepad and pen and put down a tally next to Derrick's name. "That was a top-right shot, so it's only one point. Now you're one-to-nineteen-to-fifteen."

Wendy chuckled, eyes glancing over at Derrick in slight remorse. "Oh man."

Derrick's victorious expression immediately disappeared upon hearing this aloud. He then proceeded to walk back over to the counter on the other side away from them, where he sat down and crossed his arms irritatedly. "Yeah, I don't want to play this game anymore."

"Well, it's about to finish anyway," Dipper said as he placed his hand inside the glass jar full of bouncy-ball eyeballs at the counter, taking one as he stood up and took the same position that Derrick formerly stood at across from the shelves. "Only need more one point to win, so I just gotta make any of these."

"Boo," Derrick called out to him, disatisfied.

"Boo all you want," Dipper told him as he aimed his eyeball. "It isn't gonna stop me from making this shot."

He threw the eyeball against the ground, aiming for one of the mugs. However, upon bounce, rather than going into a mug, it hit against a mug, which caused it to bounce back toward him.

"WOAH!" Dipper shouted as he quickly ducked down to avoid the fast-zooming eyeball from coming right at him.

The eyeball passed right over him and back against the floor, bouncing right back upwards toward the counter where Wendy sat behind. Aiming right for her face, she screamed just as she hit the floor to avoid it. The eyeball then bounced from the wall onto the floor behind the counter.

Dipper stood back and glanced back at the counter with a look of concern.

"You're right," Derrick told him with an amused smirk. "Only  _you_  can stop you from making that shot."

Wendy got up from behind the counter and held out the ricocheting eyeball in between her fingers for the two to see, looking over at Dipper most directly.

He chuckled awkwardly. "Sorry…"

"Another shot like that, Dipper, and you're going to give someone a black eye," Derrick jabbed as he placed his arms behind his head restfully against the counter.

"It won't be the first time," Wendy remarked, giving Dipper a playful, yet reminding glare about the last time he accidentally caused harm due to bad aim, which made him blush from embarrassment. Knowing that her turn in the game rotated in, she walked over with the eyeball over to the same spot the other two once stood. "So, what's the score again?"

Dipper sloppily reached back for his notepad on the counter, still somewhat flustered over his last turn. He looked through the tallies and recounted the scores in his head. "I'm leading with nineteen, you have fifteen, and Derrick has one."

"I already said I'm out," Derrick reminded him as he continued to rest himself against the counter.

"Anyways, you need five points to win," Dipper told Wendy as he dismissed Derrick's background statements.

"And the five-point cup is the one in the very middle, right?" Wendy asked as she gestured over at the middle cup on the middle shelf.

"Yep. Scoring that one would win you the game," Dipper nodded. "But it's also the hardest to cup to make because of the tight gap between the top of the cup and the top..."

Without aiming or even preparing, Wendy simply bounced the eyeball against the floor, the altitude and trajectory perfect enough for a flawless score within the very middle cup. The tight space right above the cup proving no issue for her.

"...shelf," Dipper finished, suddenly overcome with awe at Wendy's ability to flawlessly and effortlessly make the shot needed to instantly win and beat him.

"THE CHOKE!" Derrick shouted as he burst out laughing in response to Dipper being beaten by Wendy's clutch score. "Oh, good lord, the choke!"

"What's worse though? Messing up the shot that could've won you the game or not being able to score a single point until the game's basically over?" Wendy asked him as she came to Dipper's defense.

Derrick's laughing was immediately silenced just as she and Dipper began to snicker at him. "Alright, in hindsight, I really am the last person who should be saying anything right now."

"You really are, man," Dipper agreed as his laughter settled down.

"You played a good game, dude," Wendy said as she gave Dipper a hard pat on the back. "Though, I'll admit I was holding back for pretty much the entire game and coulda kicked both of your butts in the first four turns if I wanted to."

"I suppose a rematch to test that claim is out of the question?" Dipper challenged.

"Maybe tomorrow," Wendy said as she walked back over behind the counter and grabbed her jacket. "Shift's been over for like half an hour now. It's probably about time I get ready to head back home. I still gotta try to cram  _some_ packing in before I go to sleep."

"Oh, right. Your...move," Dipper said as his amusement from the fun of the game had suddenly turned into slight sorrow upon the reminder of Wendy's departure within a little over a week. Despite the fact that he had since the previous night to process the revelation, he was still having trouble coming to terms with it. "How's that coming along?"

"It's still happening," Wendy replied apathetically as she buttoned up her jacket. Her tone made it seem as though there wasn't any more to say on the matter.

"I figured," Dipper said with a mellow sigh, still hoping to receive more details eventually.

He still had so many questions regarding her situation but knew that it still probably wasn't the most appropriate time to ask them. The circumstances since the previous night at the party hadn't changed greatly and so there was no way Wendy would be any more willing to talk about it at that moment than she was before. He knew she'd said answers would come in time, but boy, was he desperate for them now.

The desperation at that moment would clear rather quickly, as the vending machine suddenly popped open. With the usual puff of smoke, Ford was revealed at the doorway, holding a large, filled up black trash bag over his shoulder.

"Hello, Dipper and friends!" he greeted as he began hauling the trash bag across the gift shop to the front door. He made some struggling noises as he did, indicating how much the weight of the trash bag was wearing down on him. Still, he smiled at the three and tried not to maintain any eye contact with them as he set his focus on reaching the door. "Don't mind me. Just passing along here."

Despite his claims, Dipper, Derrick, and Wendy had their focus completely set on him as he walked over to the front door.

"Uh, Great Uncle Ford?" Dipper questioned as he looked at the bag. "What's in the bag?"

"Ah, nothing. Just everything I managed to clean out from the lab this weekend," Ford casually answered as he walked along. "It's a rather... _sizable_  amount...but it's not like I can hold onto it all forever. It needs to go at some point, so why not all at once?"

"Do you need any help?" Dipper asked, noticing his struggle.

"Ah, don't be ridiculous," Ford dismissed as he reached the front door. "I can handle this just fine."

He managed to free a hand of his for a quick moment to turn the door handle and step outside. From there, he stepped out onto the gift shop porch. From inside, he could be heard throwing the large bag into the trash can outside. He then proceeded to dust off his hands as he walked back inside.

"There we go!" he claimed casually as he shut the door behind him. "Just gotta wait for the garbage workers to come and pick it up, which I believe is tomorrow morning, correct?"

"Yeah, but, don't the trash people in this town have a weight limit for how much they pick up at a house?" Wendy asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, if anything, I'll just take the contents of the bag to a remote location, blow it to dust with a rocket launcher, and be done with it," he explained to her nonchalantly, which prompted some unnerved looks from the teens. "Either way, it can be worried about another time. Now that the lab is finally cleaned up, I can move on to the next task at hand."

"I'm guessing you're gonna start working on figuring out how to clear Bill from Stan's mind?" Dipper assumed.

"I suppose that's the objective now," Ford claimed, scratching his head as he thought over it. "I do have an important mission tomorrow afternoon based on the road to achieving that goal."

"Wait, you have a mission tomorrow?" Dipper asked, growing immediately interested.

"Well, when I say 'mission', I do mean it rather lightly," Ford admitted to him with a light chuckle. "It's more of a brief investigation or search, I'd say. Fiddleford and I are going to be meeting up tomorrow at the old bunker.

"The  _bunker?_ " Dipper and Wendy asked at the same time due to the familiarity they had with the location.

"Oh boy, more stuff I don't know about 'cause I wasn't there," Derrick chimed in from the background as he realized that he had no relevance or relation to what was being discussed.

"Yes, I stored an old weapon down there before Stan and I went out to sea," Ford explained further, before glancing over at Dipper. "I'm sure you remember it, Dipper. My Quantum Destabilizer?"

"Wasn't that the weapon you tried to use against Bill during Weirdmageddon?" Dipper asked as he recalled it.

"Yes... _tried_ ," Ford restated, as he remembered his obviously failed attempt to use it against him. "That was the final shot I had in it, but Fiddleford tells me it can still be used.  _Used_ against Bill inside Stan's mind. And so tomorrow, we're going back into the bunker together to retrieve it. At the same time, he wishes to show me some adjustments and changes he's made to the bunker itself throughout the years, which I'm admittedly a bit skeptical about. But it's Fiddleford, so, I think there's just as much room to be hopeful."

"Tomorrow, huh?" Dipper asked curiously. "I'm not doing anything tomorrow. Maybe I can come along for...you know...backup!"

"Backup?" Ford questioned with an amused chuckle. "My boy, I already said it's not much of a mission. I don't believe backup is quite necessary."

"I mean, sure, but...you already said that we won't have much room for our own Gravity Falls adventures as long as this thing with Bill is going on," Dipper reminded him. "I figured that maybe opportunities like this to help out could be as close as I could get to those types of missions until this problem is solved, you know?"

Ford stroked his chin as he thought it over. "I understand."

"And trust me, I get the stakes and how vital it is that Bill is stopped soon," Dipper assured him, trying not to come off as self-centered with his request. "I just wish I could be a little bit more involved. I know you guys just got back, but still..."

"Ah, I get it, my boy," Ford cut off as he put an understanding hand on his shoulder. "You're eager to get hands-on in investigations like we used to do together. I can see how frustrating it must be to have to wait from the sidelines for the current circumstances to blow over in order to have any sort of involvement. So, if you wish to assist and gain a greater perspective, then who would I be to stop you?"

"So you're saying I can join in?" Dipper asked, clenching his fists excitedly.

"Of course!" Ford nodded with a smile. "Even though the tasks that need to be accomplished in order to destroy Bill are given to us, there's always something new to be learned for the both of us." He proceeded to make his way back over to the basement doorway. "We'll be meeting Fiddleford at the bunker tomorrow at 2 PM. Just be prepared to leave before then."

"Alright! No problem!" Dipper assured him with an eager smile.

However, his attention was then drawn back to his friends in the room, who had just sat through most of the conversation silently. While his initial intentions of joining his great uncle were just to be able to spend more time with him and to learn more, he figured that the experience would be even better spent if Derrick and Wendy came along as well. Especially Wendy, considering the lack of adventures she had hopped along for since the summer began and with her upcoming move drawing closer with each passing day. Not inviting her along would also be a break in his promise to pitch her in on every adventure he could get her in on.

"Wait, Great Uncle Ford," Dipper called out to him just before he departed back into the basement. "Any chance that maybe I could also bring my friends along with us too? I know you said it isn't really a mission, but I think the experience alone would be something they'd love to take part in."

Ford glanced back over at Derrick and Wendy and examined them as they sat back at the counter. "Well, I'm a little uneasy with the idea of bringing  _too many_  people along into the bunker with us. Especially those I have little-to-no familiarity with. You certainly know them better than I do, however, and so as long as they aren't a cause for trouble, then I welcome them along."

"You won't have to worry about any trouble. Trust me," Dipper assured him. "Wendy's great and Derrick…" He gave Derrick a quick glance over his shoulder, feeling slightly more hesitant about him. "...I can keep him in line if I have to."

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Derrick questioned from behind.

"In that case, again, I welcome them along with us," Ford restated to Dipper as he looked down at his wristwatch. "Just remember: we're meeting there tomorrow at two."

He pressed a button on his wristwatch, which prompted the vending machine to retract and cover up the doorway again, departing back into the basement. Dipper, Wendy, and Derrick were left on their own again in the gift shop.

"So, an adventure tomorrow?" Derrick asked, breaking the brief silence. "Nice."

"Again, it's not really an adventure. Like he said, we're just going down to the bunker to look for a weapon and just check things out," Dipper clarified for him, walking back over to the counter where the two sat. "Nothing really beyond that."

"I don't know, man," Wendy claimed as she rubbed her shoulder somewhat hesitantly. "I'm not really sure I want to take part in this one."

"What? Why?" Dipper asked, shocked by Wendy's reluctance.

"I mean, going back to the bunker? You don't remember what happened the last time we went down there?" Wendy asked.

"Of course, I do," Dipper nodded, easily being able to recall the day infamously known to him as the day they were almost murdered by the killer Shapeshifter and the day he inadvertently revealed his twelve-year-old feelings for Wendy. "How could I forget? After all this time, I've still been trying to block that entire day out of my mind."

"My point exactly," Wendy stated as she stood up from her seat. "Look, I know we've faced a lot of terrible things that summer, including things like Bill. But personally, that time with the Shapeshifter has always been the one thing that has occasionally kept me up at night to this day. I don't know if it's because of all the horrifying forms it took or because I wrestled myself or what. All I'm saying is that bunker brings back bad memories and I don't know if I'm all that up for the idea of going back."

"I see where you're coming from," Dipper told her understandingly. "But I mean, look at things this way. We're just going to be down there for a little bit to look around. And Ford says that McGucket has been down there a bunch of times throughout the years, so obviously he's had to have known about the Shifter being frozen. He must've done something about it in that case. And in the end, we're going down there with him and Ford: the two people who designed the bunker. So they know way more about it than we did when we went down there. If anything happens, surely, they'll be well prepared to handle things."

"I guess…" Wendy agreed. Though, it didn't help her hesitation much. She proceeded to get up and walk toward the front door to start heading out on her way. "...but I still don't know, man. I'm not kidding when I say that place still gives me the creeps after all this time."

"Yeah," Dipper nodded as he started to look down dejectedly. "I know you're not exactly comfortable with the idea of going back and that it's not my decision to make for you. But going back to what you said last night, I just thought this could be something you could tag along with us for. Make whatever time we have left together before you leave count, you know?"

Wendy thought over his point and looked on at him guiltily. That was what she had told him the night before. She could see by the look in his eyes that he genuinely wanted her to come along. She knew it had only been a day, but the fact that he remembered what she had said also demonstrated how adamant he was about making her remaining time in town count.

While she still remained somewhat unsure about coming back to the bunker, she knew Dipper wasn't trying to guilt-trip her into changing her mind. He was just being considerate and truly cared about making her final few days a decent sendoff. Especially considering the fact that they haven't hung out nearly as much as they should have been in the time since the beginning of summer. Despite it being called a 'non-adventure', they were definitely long overdue for some sort of summer thrill together.

"Ah, you're right. What am I doing?" she asked herself as she placed a hand on the side of her head. "We  _don't_ have a lot of time left together. Yet here I am, about to stupidly pass up a chance to hang out with one of my best friends whom I've hardly hung with since summer started."

"So, you'll come along?" Dipper asked her, starting to work up a hopeful smile.

"I guess," she said with a shrug and a smile. "I'm still not exactly  _excited_ to go back, but I'd be crazy to pass up one of our last chances to really hang out before this move. So, what the hell? I think I can suck up a few bad memories for that."

"Well...okay!" Dipper replied cheerfully. "Guess we'll see you there tomorrow then."

"For sure," she nodded assuringly as she opened up the door and took a single step outside before glancing back once more. "See you guys tomorrow."

"Later, Wendy!" Dipper waved just as she left, closing the door right behind her.

"I can see why you like her," Derrick remarked with a smirk as he turned to him.

" _Liked_  her," Dipper quickly corrected. "C'mon, man. I already told you, I'm long over her. There's nothing there anymore. She's just a good friend."

"Right…" Derrick said, not entirely convinced, but not caring enough to further that topic. "So, what's this about a shapeshifter?"

"Nothing. Don't worry about it," Dipper told him. "He was just an old enemy that we came across in the bunker the last time we were there. But we defeated him and I highly doubt we'll come across him again. I'm sure he's been long taken care of."

"And what if he hasn't been?" Derrick asked hypothetically.

"Again, I doubt it," Dipper reassured him. "But if he comes back, then I'm sure Ford will be able to make quick work of him while we're down there. He's got a weapon for everything."

"A weapon for everything  _except_  for a demon still hanging out in your other great uncle's mind," Derrick bluntly pointed out.

"Alright, seriously, isn't it about time for you to be heading back home too?" Dipper asked, getting a little irritated with Derrick's dubiousness.

"Probably," Derrick replied despite Dipper's clearly growing opposition to his continued presence. "But I'm just waiting until eight because that's when my granddad finishes watching his Spanish soap operas."

"Yeah, but...wait," Dipper stopped himself once he realized what he said. "Your granddad watches Spanish soap operas?"

"Yep."

"He speaks Spanish?"

"Nope."

"He... _understands_  Spanish?"

"Nope."

Dipper held a confused look. "Then, why…?"

"Trust me, man," Derrick cut him off and placed a hand on his shoulder, already knowing his question. "Even  _I_ don't know."

* * *

The next day arrived and the morning quickly passed. Ford stood in the basement readying himself, placing his large tan coat over his red turtleneck. From there, he walked up to a cabinet and opened it up, viewing various supplies and thinking over what to bring along with him.

Stan sat at a table wearing his usual wife beater and boxer briefs, holding a mug of coffee in hand, watching as his brother prepared himself for his upcoming mission.

"Aw, c'mon, Sixer! There's gotta be  _something_  I can do!" he claimed desperately to his brother.

"I'm sorry, Stan. But, as much as I'd like to bring you along, having you anywhere outside the house is just far too risky," Ford told him.

"But I feel fine!" Stan tried to assure him. "That triangle hasn't turned up since Friday night!"

"Which is exactly why I'm worried about bringing you along," Ford further went on. "Bill's had over two days to recuperate, and so I feel that calls for the need to be extra cautious in regard to where you are and what you do, as to not fuel him and give him the strength he needs to take over again."

"How do you know two days is enough time for him to recuperate?" Stan asked.

"I  _don't_ know," Ford admitted. "Maybe he needs less time. Maybe he needs  _more_ time. Either way, I'm not willing to take any risks." He closed the cabinet and proceeded to make his way over to Stan. "I've already talked with Soos's grandmother, Abuelita, who's a very nice woman. Anywho, she's agreed to supervise you while I'm gone and I've even given her my contact information to fill me in should you start acting up."

"Aw, c'mon! Seriously?" Stan questioned unenthusiastically.

"Yes, seriously," Ford nodded. "And you'll have to be upstairs, as I'll be leaving the lab locked up too. Can't have you down here on your own to leave Bill the opportunity to swap in and lurk around my lab. Who knows what he'd try to do down here?"

"Would be even less of a worry if you knew how to properly lock up your weapons down here," Stan said as he examined how most of Ford's items were simply stored within cabinets and drawers. "But seriously, Ford, is all of this really necessary?"

"Absolutely," Ford told him. "And for as much as these precautions may annoy you, Stanley, just know that I'm doing all this because you're my brother. I've already seen Bill's eyes paired with your face once before, and it's a sight I'd like to assure no one ever has to see again."

"I know, I know," Stan said as he stared back down at his coffee mug. "And I appreciate it. I just wish all of this didn't involve keeping me cooped up in this Shack doing nothing all day while you, the kids, and your friends are out actually being useful."

"Well, just know all of this is being done for your own good," Ford said as he patted his brother on the back. "Anyways, get whatever you need ready to take with you upstairs. We need to leave together so that I can lock up."

" _UGGGHH!_  Now you're putting pressure on me to get outta here?" Stan groaned lazily as he stood up from the table. "You're killin' me, Poindexter."

* * *

Dipper sat in his bed upstairs in his room with a variety of different items laid out beside him. He went through them, deciding which ones to put in his backpack and take along with him for the mission.

"Let's see…" he began. "Journal...no brainer. Blacklight...probably not necessary, but just in case. Lip balm...well, no one likes going into an underground bunker with chapped lips." He stuffed the items into his backpack and realized that was everything he had laid out on his bed. "Huh, I guess that's everything. I really don't have a lot to bring along for adventures, do I? Hmph." He rubbed his chin as another thought entered his head. "I wonder if Ford trusts me enough to make my own personalized weapon one of these days..."

"Hey bro!" Mabel shouted as she suddenly appeared at the doorway. "I'm back!"

Dipper found himself somewhat startled upon hearing her loud voice suddenly impede the quiet atmosphere he surrounded himself with while being alone in their room. He glanced over at her as she gleefully skipped her way to her bed with her own backpack and a stack of dress covers carried in her arms.

"Oh, hey Mabel," he greeted as he turned to her.

"New hoodie?" she asked as she looked down at his appearance, making note of the zipperless new reddish-orange hoodie that he wore over a white T-Shirt he had underneath.

Dipper looked down at his hoodie, pulling on it to straighten it out. "Oh, yeah. Got a new one yesterday after tossing the old one out. Thought that going full-on red would be a nice change of pace, ya know?"

"Anything's a nice change of pace from an unwashed dark hoodie covered in old Pitt Cola stains," she jabbed as she continued to study his appearance. "But I like it. It suits you and your nerdiness."

"Thanks...I guess," Dipper replied, accepting the double-edged compliment. "Anyways, how was the sleepover?"

"Great!" she stated enthusiastically as she laid her backpack and dress covers out on her bed. "Grenda and Candy still know how to have a great time after all these years! If only Sammy, Angela, and Gretchen could be here in Gravity Falls with us too. That'd be the ultimate party!"

"More like the ultimate hearing loss," Dipper stated, unable to imagine the potential screeching nightmare one could endure should Mabel's friends from Piedmont collide with her Gravity Falls friends.

"Yeah, yeah," Mabel brushed off. "Anyways, we did pretty much everything we planned on doing. We caught up on everything from the last four years, watched this romantic horror movie about a vampire, read all of the  _Wolfman Bare Chest_  sequels that have come out since last time, and spent the rest of the night making dresses!"

She then unzipped one of the dress covers and took out a long, extravagant-looking dark purple dress with a bunch of white sparkles spread out among the bottom of it.

"Uh-huh, uh-huh?" she nodded admiringly as she held it out for him to see. "What do you think?"

"Uh...great, I guess," he simply replied, not having a relatively strong opinion on it. To him, it just looked like another thing she would usually wear or design for herself.

"We made like five dresses just like this," she said as she walked over to a mirror and held out the sparkly dress over her normal clothes, getting a basic idea of how she would look in it. "I think I wanna wear one on my date with Ryland later."

"Is that not a little too...extravagant...for a first date?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow at the idea. "Not to mention how you don't even know where he's taking you. I mean, what if the date is just him taking you inside Yumberjacks rather than going through the drive-thru?"

"Oh, please. He wouldn't do something  _that_ stingy," Mabel said with an eye-roll.

"I'm just saying," Dipper defended. "I just feel as though you might wanna consider something a bit more...casual? Wouldn't he let you know if he were taking you somewhere where a dress that over-the-top would be alright?"

Mabel sighed as she realized he had a decent point. She walked back over to her bed and placed her dress back down on top of the rest of her stack of dress covers. "Yeah, you're probably right. It's just that I spent a lot of time working on these last night and just wish I had a sooner chance to show them."

"Well, it's not like you're growing anymore anytime soon," Dipper jabbed at her height. "I'm sure they'll all still fit by the time you reach your thirties."

"Ha-ha," Mabel sarcastically laughed as she punched her brother in the arm before giving him a daring smile. "Puberty may have made you the taller twin, but if you wanna talk height, then never forget the one who used to have the extra-millimeter!"

"Please. I had already forgotten by the time I had five inches over you," Dipper jabbed further.

"Shut up!" Mabel exclaimed as she gave him another hard, yet playful punch in the arm, provoking a slight wince from him at the same time the two started to laugh. As she settled down, she took notice of him preparing his backpack and assumed he was about to go somewhere. "Anyways, where are you heading?"

"Oh, right," Dipper said as he caught her gesturing toward his bag. "In a little bit, I'm going to be leaving with Ford to meet McGucket and some friends at the bunker for a mission."

"A mission?!" Mabel questioned, unhappily shocked by this revelation. "There's a mission with Grunkle Ford  _today?_ "

"Yeah," Dipper nodded. "I just found out about it last night."

"Oh no!" Mabel said, placing her hands on the sides of her face in horror. "But, my date's today! I won't be able to go unless I cancel!"

"Well, I mean…" Dipper began.

"Maybe I can still call Ryland and ask if we could reschedule things for another time," Mabel said as she took out her phone and began dialing. "God, he's gonna hate me…"

"Woah! Mabel!" Dipper exclaimed as he swiped her phone away from her and threw it onto her bed to grab her attention. "What are you doing? What are you talking about? You don't  _have to_   _go_  on the mission!"

"But I thought..." she replied.

"I don't know what you thought," Dipper cut off. "But I just asked Ford if could tag along with him on a mission he had already planned with McGucket. Hell, it's not even really a mission. I'm just saying mission because I don't another word to use. Task, maybe? Objective? I don't know, but it's not some vital once-in-a-lifetime adventure. There's not really a loss by not coming along."

"I don't know. I just feel kind of bad," Mabel admitted as she rubbed her arm. "I mean, you're getting to go on a kind-of-a-mission-but-not-really-a-mission with our Grunkle, and I'm just going out with a boy. Ever since the party, I've decided to try not to let things between me and Ryland get in the way of spending time with family. I feel like me not coming along goes against that."

"Mabel, there will always be times that should only be spent between family," Dipper told her as he sat beside her on her bed. "But that doesn't mean there aren't times that should be focused on doing you. I mean, you've had your eyes on Ryland since we got here, and now that you've finally scored a date with him, you're going to throw it away at the last minute for something you just realized was happening? And only because it involves family? That's ridiculous. The party was different because we were both breaking promises that we made to Stan and Ford that same morning. This is a date that was fairly planned in advance. If anything, you're just breaking another promise by canceling on Ryland."

Mabel thought over his words and smiled. "You're right. I guess I'm just a paranoid about letting something unimportant get in the way of what I should really be focusing on again."

"Allow me to be your guide, then," Dipper offered with a smile. "Today, this thing I'm doing with Ford at the bunker is what's unimportant, and you should put your focus on your date with Ryland."

"Alright, I gotcha. Thanks, Dipper," Mabel said gratefully. She then thought over the mission that he had mentioned before. "The bunker though? Isn't that where we fought the Shapeshifter?"

"Just about."

"Are you sure you guys will be alright?" Mabel asked, raising a slightly concerned eyebrow.

"Oh, yeah! Absolutely," Dipper assured her. "I mean, Ford and McGucket alone will probably be able to handle any problems we run into. At the same time, Derrick and Wendy are there to help too."

"Haha, Derrick," Mabel chuckled amusedly upon the mention of her rival. "That's how I know I know this is something I shouldn't care about."

"You see? Just keep that mindset when you go on your date," Dipper told her as he put a hand on her shoulder.

" _Dipper? You ready to go?"_ Ford's voice called out from downstairs.

"Yeah! I'll be right down!" Dipper called out to the open doorway as he stood up from his sister's bed. He grabbed his backpack and turned back to her, giving her a thumbs-up. "Good luck, sis. Try not to mess things up for once. The last thing I need is to find out I need to go save you from an evil blonde elf or something."

"I'll try my best, bro-bro!" Mabel called out to him as he proceeded to walk out of the room.

From there, she zipped up her dark purple dress back inside the dress cover before picking it up along with the rest of her dresses. She skipped over to her closet and hung up all the dresses from the hangars protruding from the covers. Once they were hung, she proceeded to look through the rest of her closet of sweaters, tops, shirts, and other dresses.

"What to wear...what to wear…"

* * *

Ford and Dipper walked together along a clear and open path straight through the middle of the woods. As they did, Ford looked up and around at the surrounding trees and nature as the sun beamed down on a normal summer day.

"Get a feel for this weather," Ford told his great-nephew as he looked around admiringly. "So fresh and familiar. How I've missed it. After almost an entire weekend being cooped up in the basement, it certainly feels great to take a nice stroll through the wonderful woods of Gravity Falls again without stress. Well, without as much stress as you could get given the current circumstances."

"I agree," Dipper nodded. "I'm not even the biggest outdoors guy back home in Piedmont, but there's something about being outside in Gravity Falls that makes you feel more alive. You get what I mean?"

"Oh, absolutely," Ford nodded. "Four whole years of going around to some of the biggest and smallest towns and cities the world has to offer, while also coming across the most barren and lifeless of lands. I'm telling you. Despite all the wondrous sights I've gotten to witness, nothing's ever looked more lively than Gravity Falls. Perhaps that's because all these other places have a clear reason and answer for their sights, whereas when you come here and look around, even after every answer and explanation you've been given, you still have questions. I'll admit it: sailing around the world gets boring after awhile. But here, it always feels like there's something to do."

"Guess you must feel pretty lucky to have found such a town that comes with that kind of feeling," Dipper assumed.

"Not lucky, my boy," Ford corrected with a smile. "Grateful."

The two continued to walk along the path through the forest until they reached the bunker tree. As they walked, they already caught sight of Derrick and Wendy beside the tree, waiting. What came off as a slight surprise to the two was seeing Soos standing along with them, wearing his old question mark shirt and brown cap.

"Greetings, everyone," Ford greeted as he approached them at the tree.

"Greetings?" Derrick raised an eyebrow in response to his formal greeting.

"Hey, Ford," Wendy waved casually.

"Sup, Mr. Pines Number T-" Soos began before stopping himself, realizing his mistake. "I mean...Ford! Ha! You see? I got it right that time."

Ford gave Soos a slightly amused smile as he gave him an acknowledging nod.

"Soos, what are you doing here?" Dipper asked. "How'd you know we were meeting here?"

"Oh, right. Wendy told me you dudes were doing this bunker adventure and I just had to come along!" Soos answered enthusiastically. "I mean, how am I gonna miss the sequel to one of my favorite adventures of that last summer?" He then took out a neatly folded brown paper bag from his pocket. "Melody even packed me a lunch! I'm so ready for this sequel, dude!"

"Sequel?" Dipper asked with an amused chuckle. "You're wild, Soos."

"Thanks, dude!" Soos thanked as he gave him a thumbs-up.

"What's up, Dipper?" Wendy greeted as she walked up to him, offering her fist.

"You came," Dipper said with a smile as he fist-bumped her back.

"Of course, I came," Wendy scoffed amusedly at his statement. "What? Did you think I'd chicken out? Decide I was too scared to face the bunker again?"

"No, no! Of course not!" Dipper defended, waving his arms in denial. "You know. I'm just...glad you're here, that's all."

"Well, I'm glad to be here," Wendy replied with a smile. "I wouldn't miss it."

The two smiled at one another warmly for a moment before Derrick walked up to Dipper and offered his own fist.

"Yo, Dipper," Derrick greeted just as Dipper fist-bumped him back. "You ready to get eaten by a Shapeshifter?"

Dipper elbowed him in the arm warningly. "Shut up, man. No one's gonna get eaten by anything."

"Is that what you kids are so worried about?" Ford asked with a chuckle as he heard the Shapeshifter's mention. "Oh, don't worry. From what I've been told, Fiddleford says that the Shapeshifter has been long gone. I can assure you all that we won't be dealing with anything of the sort. This will all be a very normal experience."

" _Phew!_ " Dipper sighed. Despite how much he had already assured himself the Shifter wouldn't be an issue anyway, there was still a part of him inside that felt a little tense on the possibility.

"Thank God!" Wendy said with a sigh of relief herself.

"That's good to know," Soos agreed. "Although, as relieved as I am, this is looking like a pretty boring setup for a sequel. Unlike  _The Avenging Heroes: Age of Ultra Robot Guy_ , which I hear is premiering on Gravity Falls Local TV for the first time later tonight! Gosh, I hope we can finish this mission in time for me to go home and watch it!"

"Again, this isn't really a mission," Ford cleared up as he stood in front of everyone. "We're just waiting for my good friend, Fiddleford, to arrive so that way we can go inside and find a weapon. At the same time, we'll just be safely looking around the place. It really won't be much more besides that."

"And when  _is_ Fiddleford showing up?" Dipper asked.

At that moment, everyone heard the sound of a fast-spinning propeller grow closer with every passing second. As a large gust of wind came over them, they all looked up to see a helicopter approaching and preparing to land in front of them.

"Right now, it seems," Ford replied to Dipper as he continued to look up at Fiddleford's landing helicopter.

Soon enough, the helicopter touched the ground and settled down, the propellers continuing to blow continuous amounts of heavy air as they spun rapidly. From the back of the chopper, Fiddleford stepped out and onto the ground with his cane. He looked over at the pilot through the window and waved a hand up.

"Thanks, Phil! Tell the wife I said hi!" McGucket shouted over the loud propellers.

"Will do!" Phil said with a thumbs-up from the pilot seat. "And to your wife, the same!"

"Well, my wife's a raccoon and she doesn't quite like it when I talk to other people!" McGucket told him. "But I'll try!"

Phil gave McGucket an odd look in response to his reply but simply shrugged it off as he started to fly the helicopter back up into the air. McGucket then proceeded to make his way over toward everyone else.

"Greetings, Fiddleford," Ford greeted as he walked up to him. "How was your trip to Area 51?"

"Boring!" McGucket said bluntly with an irritated look. "And the dang fools over there followed the whole death ray schematic wrong! All because someone was holdin' the thing upside-down because they thought it 'looked better.' It's a death ray, dagnabit! It ain't supposed to look good! It's supposed to kill people!"

"Uh-huh," Ford nodded, growing slightly uncomfortable with discussing the topic around a bunch of youth. "Why don't we talk about this more later? Instead, let's just get to work on this bunker, shall we?"

"Right," McGucket nodded before his eyes glanced around at the others that had come along. "Quite a lot of guests here."

"Err, is that an issue?" Ford asked as he nervously glanced around at the others.

"Not at all!" McGucket assured him. "I just wasn't expecting company, that's all. I know most of these folks though." He looked over at Dipper and was able to immediately recognize him. "Dipper, right?"

"Right," Dipper nodded as he stuck out his hand. "It's good to see you again, McGucket. You've surely gotten better over the past few years."

"And you've certainly gotten taller!" McGucket claimed as he gleefully shook his hand. "Yer probably as tall as I am now! It'd probably show better though if my back wasn't so hunched." He then turned over to the others. "Who else we got here? I see we got the red-haired one from the Mystery Shack…"

"'Sup," Wendy greeted with a casual wave.

"...and the fat one…"

"All day, everyday, dude!" Soos said heartily with a wave.

"...and the...err…" McGucket claimed as he got to Derrick, unable to recognize him for a moment. "Oh, I know! Yer the kid from the cemetery!"

"...what?" Derrick asked, not understanding who he was referring to.

" _Haha!_ " Wendy broke out laughing as she glanced over at Dipper. "You see! Didn't I say he looked like a less-emo Robbie?"

"He's new, McGucket," Dipper clarified for him with an amused grin. "A friend from back home. You two haven't met before."

"Ah, that works too," McGucket dismissed as he turned away from Derrick and began walking over to the bunker tree. "Anyways, let's get started here, shall we?"

"Right," Ford agreed as he stepped up beside him and looked up at the tree. "The first thing I noticed upon arriving here was the fact that the branch-lever used to open the bunker had been removed or dismantled from the top."

"Correct," McGucket nodded understandingly as he walked right up to the trunk of the tree. "I've thought it over and I mean, what if someone is tryin' to get inside and a stampede of horse-headed cattle are comin' yer way during the apocalypse? Having a hidden lever so high is just askin' to be stampeded. So I've replaced it with a more accessible mean of opening it up." He proceeded to bang his fist against the metallic trunk a few times. "Just gotta tap right here on the side a few times and…"

The tree and ground suddenly began to shake, prompting McGucket and the others to take a few careful steps away. At that moment, the tree and a chunk of the surrounding ground began to sink below. Everyone then proceeded to crowd around the hole formed around the tree as it sunk. Eventually, the trunk stopped sinking and a wooden staircase slowly protruded from the top all the way to the bottom, where the trunk itself soon opened up a doorway inside.

"After you!" McGucket claimed as he stepped aside, gesturing for everyone to go ahead of him.

"Here we go!" Dipper exclaimed excitedly as he began walking down the steps.

"Awesome!" Derrick said in awe as he followed behind.

"Wicked!" Wendy said as she followed behind.

"This is so dope, dude!" Soos said as he followed last.

Before stepping down, Ford walked up to McGucket with a look of skepticism. "But Fiddleford, the point of the branch-lever was  _because_ it was hard to reach. It meant one had to be clever enough to identify it as a lever and tactical enough to know how to reach it."

"I don't know about you, Ford, but the more years that pass, the less tactical I become," McGucket told him. "To get in and outta here over the years, I just needed somethin' a bit simpler to work with. Are you unpleased with the change?"

"No! I wouldn't say unpleased...more so, I just feel as though it's a little less intuitive," Ford admitted as he rubbed the back of his neck. "I suppose it's a change I can accept. I just hope that when you say you 'made improvements', you didn't just mean that you've simplified every  _other_ aspect of the bunker to fit your own working needs."

"Not at all!" McGucket assured him. "Some of the changes I've made are completely legitimate improvements! And trust me! I know we built this ol' bunker together when we were young, and I'd never go as far as to change the whole thing just to suit  _my_ needs."

"Glad to hear it," Ford said with a hopeful smile as he proceeded to start walking down the steps himself. "In that case, let's continue downward and see what else you have in store."

"Let's continue downward, indeed," McGucket nodded as he followed right behind him, beginning their descent into the bunker below.

* * *

Mabel stood in her room in front of her dresser mirror, continuing to get ready for her date. Rather than going with one of the handmade dresses she had made the previous night, she had taken to Dipper's advice and decided to simplify her appearance. She didn't know exactly where Ryland was going to be taking her, and so she struggled to find a middle ground outfit.

Obviously, she wanted something attractive, but she didn't want to wear anything that was either too over-the-top or too inviting. Something casual that would fit for almost any summer day activity. She also didn't want to risk looking boring or uninteresting either and strived to find something that showed her creative and fun side as best as she could. And it was a lunch date, so she took that as a sign not to be too formal either.

That's when she settled on an outfit that she found perfectly suited for her needs, or at least, what she assumed her needs were. Attractive, casual, and creative. She found it all in her long navy blue sundress with bright and beautifully detailed yellow stars patterned throughout, giving it the look of a starry night. Aside from the dark color making for a heavy sunlight absorber, she found it perfect. So perfect, that she was willing to make the potentially sweaty sacrifice if it meant looking as good as she thought she did at that moment. However, she had a matching navy blue floppy straw hat to the side that she contemplated wearing, simply because she wasn't sure whether it was too much.

_Knock, knock._

"Come in!" she invited, glancing over her shoulder back at the closed bedroom door as she heard the subtle knocks.

The door opened slightly and Stan's head popped inside as he slowly entered the room with a can of Pitt Cola in hand. "Hey, kiddo."

"Hi Grunkle Stan!" she greeted him just as she grabbed a hairbrush and began brushing down on the left side of her hair, continuing to prepare herself. Though she found herself slightly confused by his presence. "Hang on, aren't you supposed to be with Dipper and Ford on their bunker adventure or whatever? I can't remember if Dipper mentioned you were going..."

"Nah, not me," Stan shook his head, looking to the side kind of glumly. "I had to stay here. Ford told me that it's too risky for me to even leave the house."

"What?" Mabel asked, shocked by this reasoning. "Why?"

" _Ehem?_ " Stan cleared his throat as he pointed a finger to his head while giving her a look.

"Oh... _right…_ " Mabel quickly realized as she gave him an awkward smile.

"Yep. Can't afford to go outside when a demon living inside me can take over my body at any moment and cause me to be even more of a screw-up than usual," Stan said before taking a sip of Pitt-Cola. "Now, I gotta hang out here being watched by Soos's grandma while I do absolutely nothing all day long."

"Aw, c'mon, Grunkle Stan," Mabel said with a smile as she put her hairbrush down and looked back over at him. "First of all, you're not a screw-up. You're just a very emotional and Grunkle-y old...Grunkle. And second, I thought you loved doing nothing all day! I mean, it's what you did half the summer the last time we were here."

"I do love it," Stan shamelessly admitted. "Just not while everyone else is being useful with their time. Because then it makes a useless old man like me feel...well... _useless_."

"But, you aren't useless either," Mabel tried to convince him. "Look at things this way: by doing nothing, you're keeping yourself and everyone around you safe! That's about as useful as anyone can get while doing absolutely nothing!"

"Heh. Sure, I guess you can look at things that way," Stan admitted. He then looked back over at her and made note of her appearance and how she was getting ready. "What are you getting all dolled up for?"

"My first date with Ryland," she replied as she picked her brush back up and began brushing down on the right side of her hair. "He should be here any minute now."

"Ah, right," Stan said with a skeptical tone as he walked over to Dipper's bed and sat down. "This Ryland fellow is that blonde kid that Soos hired, right?"

"Yep!" she nodded. "You've met him before on Summerween! When you and Grunkle Ford got back."

"I dunno if I'd call that a meeting. More like an acknowledgment that we were in the same room together," Stan claimed as he thought back to that night. "Anyways, how are things going with this kid?"

"So far, so good," she stated as she put her brush back down and began doing her makeup. "A few hiccups and  _Dipper-isms_  on my part, but the fact that he's still willing to ask me out after all this time must mean something."

"And what is this one? Like a centaur in disguise...or...maybe another gnome…?"

"Very funny, Grunkle Stan," Mabel sarcastically dismissed, knowing he was poking fun at the supernatural crushes she's had in the past. "But I've spent enough time with him to know for sure he's just a normal guy who likes to do bike tricks. And  _no_ , he doesn't make out with his bike. Thankfully."

"Well, glad it's working out so far," Stan replied as he stood up from Dipper's bed. "Just make sure the two don't get too comfy. No hand holding, no sharing food, no kissing, don't stare at one another for too long…"

"Woah, woah, woah!" Mabel cut off as she turned to him, giving him a look. "Since when have  _you_ been all rules-y?"

"What? I'm just doing the standard 'dad' procedure," Stan said, innocently shrugging his arms up.

"For what? Firstly, you're my Grunkle, not my dad." Mabel reminded him as she crossed her arms. "Second, you've never done this to me before when I've introduced you to other boys."

"That's 'cause I never had to before," Stan said as he walked over to the wall beside the door and leaned his arm against it.

"Oh, really?" Mabel asked as she gave him a questionable eyebrow raise. "On the first week of our first summer here, I got a boyfriend who I had just met and was almost twice my size! Yet, you were completely cool with it and never batted an eye!" She then turned back to her mirror and continued doing her makeup. "Not to mention the time you tried to force Gideon and I together when you were being a sellout."

Stan chuckled. "Sweetie, you were twelve. And no twelve-year-old knows what they're doing when they get into a relationship that early. Sure, it may have been irresponsible of me, but I had little reason to worry. Meanwhile, now, you're sixteen, turning seventeen by the end of the summer, which is long past the age of consent here in Oregon…"

Mabel suddenly gasped and dropped her makeup brush, her face flushing a bright red in embarrassment. " _Grunkle Stan!_ "

Reflexively, she grabbed a stuffed animal that she just so happened to have had sat by her dresser and chucked it at him as hard as she could.

"Woah! Hey!" Stan shouted as the stuffed animal hit him in the arm, nearly causing him to drop his soda.

"Stop being so weird!" she demanded blushingly. "I'm not like that!"

"I'm just saying!" Stan tried to defend himself. "Geez, doesn't your dad ever give you this kind of talk when you went out with other boys back at home?"

"No, he didn't," Mabel told him as she turned back to her dresser. "He and mom were both cool with the guys I dated and always happily invited them into their lives, rather than being weird like you."

_KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!_

Mabel and Stan both turned toward the doorway, hearing the sound of loud knocks coming from the front door downstairs. Realizing it was most likely Ryland, Mabel's heart quickly began to beat rapidly in panic considering that she hadn't finished getting ready yet.

"Well, being happily inviting sounds boring," Stan replied to her with a grin as he stepped out the door of the room. "Think you should let your Grunkle Stan mix things up a bit for once."

"Grunkle Stan, please don't scare him off!" Mabel pleaded to him as she began to hurriedly put the rest of her makeup together. "I'm still not finished here!"

"Don't worry! I won't scare him off," Stan assured her as he began making his way toward the stairs. "Trust me! He'll still be standing out there by the time you finish!"

* * *

Stan made his way up to the front door and opened it up. For a split second, he saw Ryland anxiously standing outside with his hands in the pockets of his brown denim jacket. As the door opened, he quickly straightened up as he caught sight of Stan as he stood before him.

"Oh! Uh, hello, Mr. Pines," Ryland greeted, also taking a second to quickly clear his throat. He offered his hand to him. "I don't think we've formally met yet. My name is Ryland Reeds and…"

"I know who you are," Stan cut off while also dismissing his handshake. "You're the kid that's gonna take my great niece out for a good time, right?"

"That's the plan, sir," Ryland nodded.

Stan then glanced down at Ryland and analyzed. He didn't have much to comment on his appearance, but he had quickly took notice of how he had brought nothing with him. "No flowers? No chocolates? No anything? Who do you think you're impressing, kid? You're dating a Pines kid here! Not one of your lady friends from school who buys 'designer purses' from a discount store!"

Ryland rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "I mean, I did get flowers, but I just didn't bring th-"

"You forgot to bring my great niece her flowers?!" Stan exclaimed while taking a step forward menacingly.

"No!" Ryland shook his head repeatedly. "I just have them waiting over at…"

"Forget it! I've stopped caring," Stan quickly dismissed the discussion, remaining internally unimpressed. He then began to think over what to ask next. "Do you have money?"

"I work  _here_ , so what do you think?" Ryland replied.

"So, you don't," Stan concluded. "Unless Soos raised your paychecks a bunch, in which I'm gonna have to chew him out next time I see him."

"Right…" Ryland replied, starting to grow somewhat uncomfortable. He tried to peek his head over Stan's shoulder and into the Shack, checking to see if Mabel was around. "Is Mabel here, sir?"

"Of course she is. But we're the ones talking right now, got it?" Stan asked while pointing his thumb at himself, to which Ryland nodded understandingly in response. "So, let me ask: are you good enough for my great niece?"

"Well, I mean, I'd hope so…"

"Of course,  _you'd_  hope so!" Stan said with an eye-roll. "She'd hope so...I'd hope so…we'd all hope so. No one's hoping that you aren't. But the question is  _are ya?_ "

Ryland glanced around uneasily. "Yes?"

"That doesn't sound too sure..."

"I mean...yes," Ryland repeated more confidently.

"Still not convinced. My niece has dated a gnome more confident than you," Stan brought up as he remained unimpressed with Ryland. "You're like...what? 17, right? Tell me...how many other girls have you been with before?" He then proceeded to take another menacing step up to him while giving him a threatening look. "If you say a number bigger than two, you've been around far too much and I want you nowhere near my niece. If you say zero, then you ain't been around enough and she's too good for ya."

Ryland had absolutely no idea how to respond to him and just continued to grow more uncomfortable with every further step Stan took. "Uhhh…?"

" _Grunkle Stan! What did I say?"_

Stan looked over his shoulder to see Mabel marching down the steps up to him with a look of annoyance. He noticed that her makeup was completed and she also wore her matching floppy straw hat to go with her sundress.

"Hold on, pumpkin," Stan halted her as he turned back to Ryland. "If this kid doesn't say either the number one or two in the next five seconds, then you can consider your schedule cleared for the day. Actually, I changed my mind. Make that only if he doesn't say the number  _one_."

"Grunkle Stan...please!" Mabel embarrassedly pleaded for him to stop as she pushed him out of the way back into the house. "I told you not to scare him off!"

"And I said I wouldn't!" Stan replied to her before gesturing in Ryland's direction out the door. "And you see? He's still standing right here, just like I promised!"

Mabel sighed from embarrassment as she turned her head back to Ryland. "I'm  _so_ sorry, Ryland."

"No, it's alright. Don't worry," Ryland assured her with a chuckle. He proceeded to scan her appearance, eyes bulging admiringly as he analyzed her outfit. "Wow, you look... _great_."

Mabel blushed slightly in response to his compliment. "Thanks," she told him, before putting a reluctant hand on her hat, unsure of whether to remove it or not. "Is the hat too much? I wasn't sure if...it was extra or…"

Ryland began shaking his head before she even finished talking. "No, I think it goes with you  _perfectly_ ," he assured her with a smile, more than willing to accept her outgoing creative style.

Mabel's face reddened even more with this further compliment. She gave him a warm and thankful smile, the two gazing at one another admiringly. Stan had his arms crossed and watched the two for a brief moment before deciding that they had been going on for far too long.

"I think that's enough staring," he chimed in right beside Mabel.

"Oh my god! Grunkle Stan!" Mabel exclaimed as she turned to him, her face reddening from embarrassment now rather than flattery.

"Hey, I already warned you about this!" Stan defensively reminded her.

"Ryland, you just wanna go?" Mabel asked as she quickly turned back and walked up to him, starting to grow tired of her great uncle's behavior.

"That'd be nice," Ryland admitted as the two began to make their way off the back porch together.

"Hey, hey! Wait, just a second!" Stan called out demandingly as he took a few steps outside, pointing over at Mabel. "I'm not done with you yet! I still got one last thing I gotta tell ya!"

Mabel was already exhausted of Stan's attempts to embarrass her in front of the guy she was trying to impress. Still, she sighed and irritatedly marched her way back up to him, gesturing for Ryland to stay back where he was.

"What?" she asked Stan, her expression full of annoyance.

Stan silently stared at her with a strict look for a brief moment before his expression suddenly softened up and he started to smile mellowly. "Just have a good time and be careful, alright, kiddo?"

The reply admittedly went against Mabel's expectations, and she quickly found her annoyance clearing up as she looked up at her great uncle's face. That was when she quickly remembered who she was talking to and realized that it was all part of his shtick. She softened up as well and gave him a warm smile as she wrapped her arms around him tightly.

"I will," she assured him gratefully. "Thanks, Grunkle Stan."

After a brief embrace, she pulled away and quickly ran back over to Ryland. From the doorway, Stan continued to mellowly watch on as his grown-up great niece happily walked alongside her date. Despite his bittersweet emotions, he wasn't about to let them get away with anything as long as he was still able to see them.

"And watch those hands!" he called out to them from the porch. "As long as I'm watching, I better not see any of those hands slip!"

" _Ugh…_ " Mabel groaned embarrassedly at Stan's final dig.

"Geez, is your Great Uncle always this strict?" Ryland asked her as they walked along.

"Nah, he isn't," she replied as her smile began warming back up. "Don't worry. He's just looking out for me."

"So, he's a cool guy then?" Ryland assumed.

"I wouldn't say he's a  _cool_ guy," she admitted, not one to believe there was anyone particularly 'cool' in her family. "But he's definitely a  _great_ guy."

As the couple chatted, they soon turned on a path that led them out of Stan's sight. He sighed glumly, realizing the rest of the day would have no stakes for him.

"Well, that's about as much fun as my day's gonna get," he said to himself as he continued to stand at the porch doorway.

From behind him, Abuelita proceeded to walk into the living room with a TV remote in her hand. As she sat down in her chair, she quickly noticed Stan at the doorway.

"Mr. Pines!" she called out to him, grabbing his attention. "Your brother tells me you are unwell and must be watched!" She proceeded to gesture over to the other seat in the living room in front of the TV. "Join me here!  _Mi telenovelas_  are about to start."

" _Aye-Yai-Yai_ ," Stan said to himself as he shook his head desperately at the rest of the day to come.

 


	31. Back to the Bunker: Part 2

As Dipper, Derrick, Soos, and Wendy declined down the staircase, the increasing depth led to a decline in natural luminosity. Upon reaching the bottom, the four had found themselves staring out into pitch black darkness. While they felt they had completed walking down the bunker's stairs, there wasn't a single light to guide them the rest of the way throughout.

"Woah. This is freaky," Derrick said as he squinted his eyes through the dark room.

"I'm getting chills, dudes," Soos claimed, getting a slight shiver down his spine as he reacted to the atmosphere.

"Yeesh. Did someone forget to install a lamp?" Wendy asked as she tried to see through the darkness.

"Anyone got a light on them or something?" Dipper asked, also attempting to look around.

"Allow me!" McGucket's voice suddenly intruded from the darkness behind the four.

At that moment, a flick was heard and there was an electrical startup noise. Soon after, a bunch of ceiling lights lit up and illuminated the entire room, diminishing the darkness and allowing everyone to see their surroundings.

Looking around the bunker, those who hadn't been there in ages were able to quickly make out the familiarity of the space. Many of the same parts of the room that they remembered still remained, except they were far less dusty and dirty than they were before. Things like the weapon cabinet, prepared future supplies, bed, and food storage all appeared much more polished and clean, if not entirely replaced. There were also several new signs and warning plates hung from the walls.

And with the greater, repaired illumination, the place gave less of an intimidating vibe in comparison to the previous time as well.

"Woah. Check it out, dude," Soos said in awe as he looked around.

Dipper took a few steps forward to get a closer look at everything. "It's so much more... _organized_."

Wendy ran her finger across one of the shelves, trying to see if she could collect a spot of dust from an otherwise clean surface. "And not nearly as dusty."

"Yep! As I said, I've been down here several times over the years," McGucket reminded them as he walked beside Ford. "Part of the point of my visits was to clean this ol' place up. Place hadn't been used for about thirty years! Need to give 'er some polish, ya know?"

Ford smiled as he looked around. "I must say that I do like the adjustments you've made to the layout. It allows for greater mobility while keeping everything more conveniently within reach. Very innate indeed."

"I told ya, Ford. I've worked hard to build this place around for both of our ideas," McGucket said as he patted him on the back.

"Well, to be fair, a layout change is a bit minuscule for that type of claim," Ford pointed out as he looked over at him. "But again, I'm not going to be the judge of things I don't already know. This is a change that I do appreciate, however."

"That's all I need to hear," McGucket said with a smile. "Now, c'mon. Let's go find that Destabilizer."

As the two walked over to the weapon cabinet, Dipper kept exploring the bunker, his mind going down memory lane on each object he recognized. Given how the last time he had been there, the mission was to locate the author of the journals before learning it was his great uncle. At that point in time, they didn't spend long in the first part of the bunker and had quickly progressed throughout the rest of it. Now, he was taking his time to look around and see what it offered, and while the idea was pretty basic, it still felt like he was going through a whole new experience.

For someone like Derrick, the bunker was a whole new concept to him that he was unraveling as he went along. Dipper noticed him and was able to tell by his expression that he wasn't bored or unfazed by where they were or what they were doing, which said a lot for someone like him.

"What do you think so far, man?" Dipper asked him as he stepped up beside him.

"This is all pretty cool. Not gonna lie," Derrick said with a nod. "I mean, just check this place out. It's like a bomb shelter."

"Well, it kind of  _is_ that," Dipper cleared up for him. "It's like a mix between that and a research station."

"And this is where you guys got attacked by the Shapeshifter?" Derrick asked as he walked over to another wall, noticing a sign that piqued his interest.

"Not this room specifically, but yeah, we did get attacked down here," Dipper replied in a somewhat unnerved tone in response to Derrick yet again mentioning the Shapeshifter.

He turned away from Derrick for a moment and glanced over at the corner where Soos and Wendy stood. There, they were searching shelves and glancing around at different tools and weapons laid out among them.

Soos leaned in from behind one of the shelves and picked up an old, opened metal can for  _Baron Num Nums High Flyin' Beans_. The label had an old-timey picture of a man beside his dog, both of them wearing pilot goggles.

He turned to Wendy and held it out for her to see. "Check it out. Guess McGucket didn't clean  _everything_ up. Heh."

Wendy looked at the can, her eyes immediately drawing toward the label. As she looked on at it, she began to remember the man in the picture as the initial form that she had seen the Shapeshifter in when they first encountered it.

The moment she came to the realization, it was as if the man from the picture leaped out from the can and jumped right out at her. She gasped fearfully and flinched, her entire backside ramming into the metal shelf behind her, causing her to wince in pain.

Soos stepped back worriedly, unsure what just happened to her. "Wendy? You alright, dude?"

"I'm fine! I'm fine…" she quickly assured him as she reached over her shoulder and rubbed a spot on her back where she had hit herself. She glanced to the side, taking her eyes off the can. "Just...throw that can out, man."

"But, don't you wanna dare me to lick the inside or…?"

"I said,  _toss it_ , Soos," Wendy repeated, giving him a warning glare.

Despite not being sure what he had done wrong, Soos grew somewhat intimidated by her serious tone and decided to follow through, promptly tossing the can right over his shoulder without another word. Wendy acknowledged his action and turned away, gripping her arm as she went to check out the rest of the bunker to clear her head.

Dipper witnessed this entire exchange and looked on remorsefully at Wendy and her persisting fear of the Shifter. It was perfectly rational fear for her to have, but he partially blamed himself for her even having it. He was the one who invited her along for the first bunker adventure. Had she not come along, she wouldn't have ever encountered the Shifter and never would've had to suffer the fear of it.

Then again, had she not come along, then the whole adventure with just him, Mabel and Soos could've gone a lot differently.

Ford claimed there was nothing to be worried about, but even then, the memories still haunted Wendy. There may not have been a physical threat, but there was the mental image. If something as simple as a bean can was able to startle Wendy, then Dipper feared to imagine how she'd react if the actual Shifter were to return.

He already felt guilty for indirectly bringing this fear upon her in the first place. He didn't want this to be another adventure for her to have to suffer through.

"Look, Derrick, since the last time we were down here, Wendy gets kind of...uncomfortable being reminded of the Shapeshifter," Dipper explained to him as he continued looking at Wendy as she looked around. "I mean, you remember what she said last night. And I'm responsible for bringing her on  _that_ adventure. I don't want this one to be something she has to suffer through. So, maybe you could do me a favor and not bring it up so she doesn't keep-"

Dipper cut himself off as he turned his head back to Derrick. His eyes bulged as he spotted him taking a metal sign down from a wall that read 'In case of emergency, break glass'.

"Dude! What are you doing?!" Dipper whispered as he quickly walked over to him with a panicked look.

"Taking this sign," Derrick told him casually. "Remember all those times in school when I used to joke around about how funny it would be if someone put an 'In case of emergency, break glass' sign next to a window? That way, when there's an emergency, someone breaks the window and then we'd have a bunch of kids running out of school through the window? Yeah, well, I'm not gonna do that, obviously. But I'm gonna put this next to my window. So that way when there's an emergency, I have an excuse to jump out my window." He jokingly elbowed him in the arm a few times with an amused look on his face as if he was being clever. "Huh?  _Huh?_ "

"What the...?! No!" Dipper dismissed as he swiped the sign away from Derrick. "Dude, you can't be taking signs from here! This bunker is half-owned by my great-uncle! Plus, this is an emergency sign! You can't take something when it's needed down here!"

"Dipper! What're you doing with that sign?" Ford's voice suddenly called out from behind as he noticed Dipper holding the metal sign in hand.

Startled by the sudden intrusion of his great-uncle's voice, Dipper turned around to face him. He then glanced over at Derrick, who just awkwardly stood behind him. He proceeded to look back and forth between himself holding the sign and Ford, realizing he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Wait, Great Uncle Ford! I can explain!"

Ford sighed somewhat disappointedly as he picked the sign up from Dipper's hands, walking back over to the wall it originally belonged to. "Look, Dipper, I understand you're excited to be getting hands-on in the field again and I know that you've been down here at least once before. But there are some very dangerous things down here." He then hung the sign back up where Derrick had taken it down from. "Sure, it's just a sign. No real harm. But please try not to make such an injudicious choice as to take things down from where they're meant to be."

"B-but, I was telling Derrick…" Dipper stammered, trying to defend himself.

"I'm not mad, my boy," Ford cut off as he put a hand on his shoulder. "I just want you to be more careful. Feel free to look around and such, but don't have poor judgment.  _Especially_ not down here, where one mistake could be your last."

Ford proceeded to walk back over to where Fiddleford stood over by weapon cabinet and immediately got back to talking with him.

Dipper stood in place, feeling a sense of shame from his great-uncle catching him in the act of a crime that he hadn't done. This shame quickly transformed into frustration, prompting him to clench his fists tightly as he turned back to Derrick.

"What's wrong with you?!" Dipper scolded his friend in a subtle volume as to not draw attention from anyone else. "Why would you do something so stupid down here?"

"It was just a sign, man! I'm sorry!" Derrick apologized as he backed up a bit.

"I told Ford that if I brought you guys along, there wouldn't be any trouble!" Dipper continued to vent. "Yet here you are, causing trouble only for it to get pinned on me! And you didn't even fess up!"

"At least he knows you! If he had caught me, it probably would've been worse because he'd see it as some kid, that he doesn't know, touching his stuff!" Derrick tried to defend himself.

"Then, you  _know_ why it's a problem!" Dipper pointed out to him. "So, stop causing the problem! Be better then!"

Finished with his venting, Dipper turned around and proceeded to walk away. Derrick stood in place, feeling somewhat confused inside. Back in Piedmont, he and Dipper never have these kinds of arguments. Since he met him in Gravity Falls earlier that summer, he felt like things hadn't been the same.

"Dude, what happened?" he asked, grabbing Dipper's attention back. "Since summer started, it seems like every time I hang out with you, I'm the guy who gets the other end of the stick. I mean, c'mon, we've spent four years being bros at school together. Yet you spend one summer here before, and your friend from back home barely even matters when he comes along."

"That's because this isn't home, Derrick," Dipper told him as he turned back to him. "I've told you this before. You can't get too comfortable here. Coming into this town is like walking into a guest's house. If you wanna impress anyone, you need to straighten yourself out. You can't carry your shticks from Piedmont over and expect everyone to be cool with it. If you'd just learn that, you'd understand the beauty of this town. Then you wouldn't keep receiving the other end of the stick."

Derrick narrowed his eyes at this statement. "So, what? I'm treated the way I am because I'm different?"

"There's no issue with being different. The issue is being stubborn," Dipper stated as he turned his back to him. "I was different too and I was accepted. But being stubborn never got me anywhere. Once I let go, then this town changed me. And if you'd let go, then it can change you too."

Dipper walked away from him to join Wendy and Soos in checking out the bunker. As he was left alone, Derrick watched the three and their interactions, mentally comparing them to the interactions he had with them, which were very minuscule and uninteresting in comparison.

Truthfully, most of the summer so far, he's felt left out. The thing was, he knew he was a problematic individual. He stole, he lied, and when it came to people he didn't like, he had the tendency to talk more with his fists. But apparently, the standards were different for a town like Gravity Falls.

And according to Dipper's word, he hadn't reached that standard yet.

* * *

Deep in the woods, Mabel and Ryland had continued to walk through, with Ryland leading her to the spot of their date. Mabel still had no idea where or what the date even was, and had even asked him where they were heading earlier in their walk. However, he had just smiled and told her it was a surprise. At that point, there wasn't even much of a path to follow anymore and they were just walking through natural terrain to get there.

She wasn't sure what to expect by the idea of going so far into the forest, and it gave her subtle recollections to her dates with 'Norman'. But with Ryland, she had no reason to feel unsafe. She's been around him enough to know that he's proven himself to be a trustworthy boy with no unreal motives or a reason to be deemed a threat. He wasn't a vampire or a puppet-kisser or an evil child.

He was a normal high school teen like her and they were going on a normal date.

And with their feelings for one another abundantly clear, she now felt a sense of relief being around him. She didn't feel nearly as uptight or unsteady as she was back at the party or some of their other interactions. Sure, the mentality of wanting to impress him and not make a fool of herself in front of him still remained, but she didn't feel anxious. In fact, she wished she had always been as collected around him as she was at that moment. Her face reddened from embarrassment every time she thought about nearly any of their past interactions and how easily flustered she would get.

Aside from being a little nervous, she was confident about herself and where things would go. Getting the feelings out had always been the hardest part of any relationship to her. A date was nothing in comparison. If she could get past one measly date with Ryland, they'd be set for the rest of the summer, granted they don't run into any issues.

"So, how much farther is this place?" Mabel asked as she walked alongside him.

"Actually, we're pretty much there," Ryland replied as continued walking.

"Pretty much?" Mabel asked, raising an eyebrow as she looked around, unable to see any attractive place within the dark woods where they could possibly be having their date. "Okay, help me out here, but I'm  _not_  exactly seeing anything other than darkness and trees here."

Ryland chuckled as he walked up to a bush and stopped. "Well, that's because this isn't the spot."

He then placed his hands into the bush and pulled it open wide enough for them to walk through. He held his arm in the opening he made and stood back, offering for her to go ahead. Curiously, she walked through, taking a few steps forward before stopping as her eyes were immediately met by a wondrous sight.

" _This_  is."

They looked around to see a large clear segment within the forest. The darkness had cut off as there was large clearing that allowed the sun to puncture from above as opposed to being overshadowed by trees. A river flowed right through the middle of the segment, followed by a flowing waterfall coming down a rocky wall. Piles of rocks lay among the outside of the river, but behind, there was flat green grass. The sun lighting bringing a layer of vibrancy to the surrounding colors.

"Oh. My. God," Mabel marveled at the sight.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Ryland asked as he stepped up right beside her. "I actually found this place because of a bike accident." He pointed up to a rocky ledge beside the waterfall. "My front tire burst and I lost control, and it led to me falling right down onto that ledge, flipping down into the river. As you can imagine, I was in a lot of pain, but once I pulled myself back onto land, I looked around and just got lost in the sight. I don't know why, but I always thought it would be a good spot to take someone on a date." He turned his head toward her and smiled. "Guess you got lucky."

"Ryland…" she said with a blushing smile. "This is so sweet. I've never seen this part of the woods before, yet, I'm already in love with it's magic!"

"Well, couldn't have thought of a better place to set up a picnic, ya know?" Ryland replied as he took a few steps forward.

"A picnic date?" Mabel asked as she followed, intrigued by the intimacy of his idea. "You really did take the time to plan this all out, didn't you?"

"Maybe," Ryland teased with a smirk. "Just you wait. If you're already loving the view, then I'm sure you'll love…WOAH, WHAT?!"

Ryland immediately stopped in place as he looked over near the edge of the river and saw a group of five gnomes around a picnic basket. They sat around, eating out of glass containers, stuffing themselves.

"Ah, the presidential life. Ain't it great, boys?" Jeff the Gnome said as he laid his back against the basket relaxingly. "Hey, Steve. Can you pass your president another one of those grapes? I can't get enough of that tang!"

"Shmebulock!" Shmebulock said to Jeff as he pushed over a can of soda over to him.

"No, Shmebulock!" Jeff said as he pushed the soda back away. "I already said I've had enough soda."

"Shmebulock!" Shmebulock replied as he gestured back to the can.

"Yeah, you're right," Jeff said as he tapped his chin, reconsidering it. "It's free food! Why let it go to waste?"

" _What the hell?!_ " Ryland distraughtly questioned as he and Mabel ran up to the basket. "Gnomes eating out of my picnic basket?!"

"Jeff?!" Mabel asked as her eyes laid upon the gnome, immediately growing a sense of aggravation.

"Oh, look who it is!" Jeff said as he noticed Mabel, immediately jumping back up to his feet as he looked on at her flirtatiously. "Mabel Pines! Still looking as stunning as ever!"

"Ew! That can only ever be creepy coming from you!" Mabel replied in disgust.

Jeff's eyes then glanced over at Ryland and scanned his appearance. "And, uh, I see we also have the blonde guy that still needs a haircut."

"First of all, it's a stylistic choice," Ryland defended as he flicked his long blonde hair back. "Second, YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS ARE EATING OUT OF THE PICNIC BASKET I SET UP!"

"Jeff, what the heck!" Mabel said angrily as she looked down at him.

"Woah, woah, woah! Hold on a moment!" Jeff tried to stop them. "Look, maybe you're the one who set it up, but my buddies and I here just stumbled upon this basket in the middle of the woods! It was unattended, so, of course we raided it! We're gnomes! Scavengers! This is what we do! That makes this your problem, buddy! Not ours!"

"Wait, hang on…" Ryland said as he looked down on the ground and noticed a bunch of green stems in a pile. He picked them up in his hand and immediately recognized them. "What happened to the flowers?!"

"Oh...uh…" Jeff said as he slowly turned to the side. "Shmebulock?"

At that moment, Shmebulock promptly spat out a wet wad of chewed-up daisy tops into his hands. He then stepped forward and offered the wad to him, to which he and Mabel simply stared on in utter revulsion.

"He... _ate_  the flowers..." Ryland said, his expression mixed with disbelief and disgust.

Mabel gasped admiringly. "You got me flowers?"

"I  _had_ gotten you flowers," Ryland replied with an irritated facepalm.

"Well, again. Your problem, not ours," Jeff repeated. "If you didn't want us to eat from it, you shouldn't have made it so easy to get to!"

"AH! God dammit! He's got a point!" Ryland admitted, realizing his foolish mistake.

"They're just gnomes," Mabel pointed out before cracking her knuckles. "We could just teach them a lesson."

"Oh, c'mon!" Jeff groaned. "Are you seriously gonna beat us up just for going about our own business? How were we supposed to know this belonged to you?"

"Just leave them be, Mabel. It is my fault after all," Ryland told her as he looked down at the basket.

"Haha! That's right!" Jeff laughed victoriously. "But don't see yourself too short, blondie. Lucky for you, we didn't finish  _everything_ you had in there."

Ryland picked up the basket and put a hand inside, searching around. His eyes then bulged in surprise as he found himself pulling out a large, covered dish from the inside.

"Hey, they didn't even take a bite out of the main meal!" Ryland said happily as he turned his head back to Mabel.

"Oh, yeah. Not that thing," Jeff said as he looked on at the dish in disgust. "Bleh _!_  It smelled so bad that Jason's eyeballs started burning."

"I still think I need to go to a hospital," Jason replied as he sat with a large white bandage wrapped around his eyes, which also prevented his ability to see anything.

Ryland gave a slightly offended look as he took the cover off the dish, exposing the top of a finely baked soufflé. He gave it a brief whiff, having absolutely no problem with the scent. "It smells pretty good to me."

" _UGH!_ " the gnomes groaned in disgust as they pinched their noses shut.

"C'mon fellas, lunch time's over!" Jeff said as he held his nose, gesturing for the gnomes to move. "We'll come back when they and their vile substance leave our territory!"

The gnomes began to scurry off, with Jeff, Steve, Carson, and Shmebulock immediately jumping into the bushes. However, a blinded Jason began scurrying off in the other direction, leading to him falling straight into the river.

"Oh, for crying out loud!" Jeff said as he poked his head back through the bushes in Jason's direction. "Wrong way, Jason!"

In response, Jason immediately climbed back out of the river and ran in the correct direction. Soon, he jumped into the same bushes that the other gnomes had gone through and the five disappeared from Mabel and Ryland's sights.

Ryland continued to hold a slightly offended expression to the gnome's reaction to the dish. "My mom made this soufflé."

"Aw, don't listen to a bunch of dumb gnomes. I'm sure it's as great for eating as it is for repelling annoying gnomes!" Mabel said as she nudged him in the elbow.

"Yeah," Ryland nodded as he began warming back up to the date despite the circumstances. He proceeded to sit down in the grass beside the basket. "At the very least, we still have the main course to get through. If anything, once we're done, we can just clean up and go to Hermanos Brothers or something. Not my original plan, but…"

"Oh, don't be silly!" Mabel dismissed as she sat down in the grass across from him. "We don't need food to have a good first date! I mean, I haven't eaten since breakfast and I'm sure this won't be enough to fill either of us, but that's not what matters! You clearly put a lot of effort and planning into all this and we shouldn't let such a view on a perfectly sunny day go to waste! And honestly, I'm happy as long as we're spending time together."

Ryland smiled warmly at her. "Me too."

"Woah, woah, woah!" Jeff's voice suddenly interrupted as he and the other gnomes popped back out of the bushes. Their returning presence brought looks of annoyance back to the faces of the two teens. "What is going on here? Why are you two sitting now? Why aren't you leaving? What is this?"

"It's called a date, genius," Mabel replied with an eye-roll.

"A d-date? A date?!" Jeff questioned, flabbergasted by this revelation as he looked back and forth between the two. "You two...are on a date?"

"Gee, I don't know. I mean, two young teens, having a picnic together, alone outside in a fairly romantic spot in the middle of the woods..." Ryland answered sarcastically.

"...would've had some flowers too if your buddy didn't eat them…" Mabel added on.

"Shmebulock..." Shmebulock replied as he looked down guiltily.

"I'm sorry. I'm just a bit shocked," Jeff said as he walked back up to them. "A date, huh? Interesting…"

"Interesting, how?" Mabel asked, crossing her arms skeptically at him.

"Well, I mean, you know our history, Mabel," Jeff replied as he straightened out his hat on his head. "The good ol' days of Mabel and, err, Norman. You remember…"

"I wish I didn't," Mabel said as she looked to the side annoyedly at his reminder.

"Yeah. Good times they were," Jeff said as leaned against the picnic basket between the two, continuing to look over at Mabel as if Ryland wasn't there. "I remember all the dates we went on. Throwing frisbees, making flower necklaces, frolicking through the cemetery... _YAHHH!_ "

Tired of Jeff's nonsense, Mabel had grabbed ahold of Ryland's soufflé and placed it directly under Jeff's nose as he spoke, giving him enough time to inhale and catch the scent. As the smell got to him, he began running away, screaming as he and the other gnomes jumped back into the bushes.

Mabel had stood up to watch the gnomes take off and get out of their sight again, keeping an uptight expression as she did. As soon as she was assured they were gone, she sat back down and smiled at Ryland.

"So, a soufflé, huh?" Mabel asked as she took a plastic fork from the picnic basket. "I've always wanted to try Canadian food!"

Ryland chuckled. "It's French."

"Oh. Even better!"

"Hang on, don't you speak some French?" Ryland realized.

"Keyword:  _some_ ," Mabel playfully pointed out to him, just as she took a forkful of the soufflé and put it in her mouth.

" _Pfft…_ " Ryland laughed at her response. "Yep, this is gonna be great."

The two broke out laughing together, which didn't go unseen by Jeff and his gnomes, who continued to stalk the two through the bushes. The more he saw the two enjoying themselves, the more jealous Jeff got.

"She really likes this blondie, huh?" Jeff said as he stepped away from the bushes and thought.

"We could just call up the rest of the colony, push the blonde into the river, and take Mabel," Steve suggested.

"No!" Jeff denied. "That was the way of the hierarchy! We're a democracy now! As president of our colony, I say no more kidnapping!"

"How're you gonna get her then?" Carson asked, raising an eyebrow.

"The old-fashioned way, boys," Jeff said confidently. "We're gonna win her over by appealing to her heart! We're gonna outrank that blondie up to the point where she'd rather be with me than with him! Instead of being vicious and demanding like before, we're going to be sweet, caring, and thoughtful!"

" _UGH!_ " all the other gnomes groaned at the idea.

"I hate democracy!" Jason exclaimed as he shook his head.

"Shmebulock!" Shmebulock said angrily.

"Yeah, well, your president doesn't care what any of you think!" Jeff exclaimed bluntly. "We're doing things this way, and trust me, by the end of the day, Mabel Pines will be  _mine_."

* * *

Dipper had begun to walk over to the corner where Wendy stood in the bunker. She was looking over a set of large blades and axes that were hung up along the side of the wall. She ran a finger along the wood of one of the handles, examining it.

"Hey," he said as he approached her with a concerned smile. He cleared his throat. "You, uh, doing alright?"

"Yeah, man. I'm doing great," she assured him while giving off a confused smile. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, I'm just making sure you're not like...I don't know...uncomfortable being down here or anything," he replied while rubbing his neck awkwardly.

"Eh, I'll admit it's a little unnerving," she said was a shrug. "But I'm sticking my neck through it."

"Are you sure?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "Because I'm telling you: if you ever feel like  _any of this_  is too much for you, you can drop out at any time."

"C'mon, dude," she said as she turned back to him. "If I wanted to drop out, I'd have done by now. With or without your approval."

"Oh...well...alright…"

"The fact is: I'm still here. And I don't have a real reason to turn back just yet," she said as she put a hand on his shoulder. "So, just trust me when I say that I'm good and I can go through with this. Alright?"

Dipper smiled hesitantly, but acceptingly. "Alright."

"Are you sure you left it here?" McGucket's voice was then heard by the others from across the room.

"I'm positive, F," Ford nodded as he walked over to the center of the bunker and looked around. "I didn't go very far in when I dropped it off. I just opened the bunker up and safely placed the Destabilizer to the side in this room. You had to have placed it somewhere else around here during one of your visits throughout the years."

"It would have had to have been in the weapons closet if I had, though," McGucket replied, tapping his chin as he thought it over. "But it clearly wasn't there."

Ford glanced his head around at the different corners of the room where everyone stood. "Has anyone else had any luck in locating the Quantum Destabilizer?"

"No, but I totally found another one of those old-timey SMEZ dispensers," Soos said as he took out a SMEZ dispenser from his pocket for everyone to see. "It looks like you  _can_ strike treasure twice in the same hole."

He proceeded to dispense a piece of the SMEZ's candy into his mouth, chewing on it in satisfaction despite the dusty taste. However, McGucket soon walked over to him and snatched the dispenser right from his hands.

"Ah, I keep misplacin' these ol' things down here," he said as he stuffed the dispenser into his pocket.

"Aw," Soos said dejectedly. "Once you get past the dust, it's actually got a fruity flavor."

"Fiddleford, think," Ford urged as he walked back over to McGucket, getting back to the matter at hand. "Do you have any possible recollection of where you could've placed that weapon?"

Fiddleford stroked his beard as he tried his hardest to remember. "Aww, banjos and bumpersnazzles! I got nothin'! I'm tryin' my darndest to remember, but I just can't!"

Ford put an understanding hand on McGucket's shoulder. "It's okay, old friend. Maybe your memory just isn't as stable as it may seem."

"I just don't know how I could forget somethin' like this!" McGucket continued to wonder aloud. "I remember just about everythin' else about my visits down here! How could I not remember where I put a dang death ray?"

"I mean, if we're certain we've checked everywhere, couldn't the Destabilizer just be in one of the other rooms in the bunker?" Dipper suggested.

"That's the only other possibility," Ford nodded. "Though, I can say that wasn't part of the initial plan."

"But...I'm guessing we have no choice," Wendy said with a look of reluctance.

"Whatever it takes to destroy Bill and save Stan," Dipper claimed.

"I suppose we should get a move on then," McGucket said as he walked over to a round metal door that protruded from the wall marked with the words 'Caution: Stay Out'.

He put his cane to the side and placed his hands on the valve in the center before giving it a good turn using all his strength. There was a metallic noise as he turned, prompting that the door had been opened. He reached back for his cane with one hand and pulled the door open with the other, unveiling a circular metal tunnel into the next room.

"Oh,  _great_ ," Dipper said unenthusiastically once he remembered where this room led to. " _This_  room."

"Which room is next?" Derrick asked.

"The security room," Ford answered, also somewhat unnerved.

Despite the fears of those who remembered the room, one by one, they had begun crawling through the tunnel. The fear was mostly generated by the close-calls those had in the room, nearly getting crushed by a bunch of blocks that slowly came out from the walls. The idea of having to get through that to get into the next room wasn't particularly thrilling, no matter how exhilarating it might've been to some.

"So, just cause I still feel a little bit in the dark here…" Derrick began as he crawled through the tunnel behind everyone else. "What exactly is this security room and why does that sound incredibly ominous?"

"The security room is built to be passed right before entering the lab," McGucket explained as he crawled ahead of everyone else. "I based the design off an old game called Soviet Blocks."

"Oh, I've played that before at the local arcade, dude!" Soos pitched in. "I can see now that you are a man of culture and inspiration. Very clever craftsmanship indeed."

"The room is designed in a way where the middle piece is a trigger for all the pieces of the room to extrude into a puzzle trap," Ford explained further. "There's a passcode one must activate to get into the next room and those who don't know it end up getting crushed."

Derrick's eyes bulged, now understanding the dread of his peers. "That's...hardcore…"

"Actually, Ford. I should probably let you know that I made some adjustments to the room a bit too," McGucket informed him.

"Did you now?" Ford asked, growing a little weary by this revelation.

"No worries! I've improved it!" McGucket assured. "Instead of one little trigger in the center of the room, I've designed multiple triggers! And they're hidden instead of being outlined by symbols!"

"Wait, what?!" Ford asked, appalled by these so-called 'improvements'. "Fiddleford, that sounds insane! How are any of us supposed to know the triggers?"

"That's the point!" McGucket nodded. "Those who know which ones are the triggers can walk up to the door without activating the trap! Those who don't can set off the trap, and then they gotta deal with entering in the security code to get to the door! This is just so that way we lower the risk of death for any of the times we normally try to enter the lab!"

"Walk up to the door without activating the trap?" Ford asked as McGucket explained. "F, isn't the point of a security room to be...?"

"And here we are!" McGucket cut-off as he finally reached the end of the tunnel, crawling out and back onto his feet among a platform outside.

Everyone else promptly crawled out from the tunnel as well and stepped out onto the platform. However, as they did this, a quick glance at the new security room was all they needed to fill themselves with absolute horror.

What some remembered as a smaller room designed to fit a few people had now been expanded into a drastically larger room. The surrounding walls had been expanded outward, giving for a lot more floor room. The same block pattern among the floor and walls had been retained, except with obviously more blocks. There didn't appear to be any symbols on the floor, however, and so as McGucket said, it was impossible to tell what was a trigger and what wasn't.

The gang stood on a set of blocks right beside the door that was outlined, which seemed to imply a section where one could step onto after coming from the tunnel without triggering anything. Directly across the room was a similar outline marked next to an open doorway into the observation deck. The blocks in between both outlines appeared to be the zone where the trap could actually be activated.

"Mother of…" Ford said to himself as he looked around in shock.

"Hey, Fidds? When you were making this, did the word 'overkill' ever come to mind?" Wendy asked as she continued to look on at the newly designed trap in horror.

"Oh, I get it, dude!" Soos claimed. "You based this new design off of the harder difficulties of Soviet Blocks, eh? It does take a fast brain to get past those."

"Anyway, as you can see, the door into the next room is already open," McGucket pointed out. "All we gotta do now is get to the other side without setting off the trap."

"And how are we supposed to do that?" Dipper asked as he cautiously looked at the blocks on the ground.

"Simple! We just gotta step on the ones that don't trigger it!" McGucket explained. "Now I'm gonna need y'all fellers to line up behind me. There's quite a few of us here and I think our best way across without risking one of us getting to deal with trap is if y'all follow my steps across slowly. Which means every step that I leave behind on a block, the person behind is going to take that step. We watch every step slowly and carefully without making any wrong moves and we're golden!"

"Fiddleford, wait!" Ford halted. "I'm not sure this is a good idea. I mean,  _you_  remembering which blocks are the ones that don't set off the trap? I don't mean to be critical, but you've already proven once today that your memory may not be the most reliable. Going across this trap could be asking for even more trouble than it's worth."

"Look, I know I couldn't remember where I might've placed the Destabilizer, but I've been down here and across this trap enough times to where it sticks at the back of my head," McGucket tried to assure him. "I know it might be hard to trust me, but I'm asking you to just this one time. I'm confident that if y'all follow my steps, there won't be any risk."

Ford sighed, remaining hesitant. He's had his own close calls with the security room before and the idea of getting trapped in a revamped version that he wasn't as familiar with unsettled him. He hated that his trust in Fiddleford's memory had lessened up to the point where he wasn't sure whether they should even continue. Not that they had gotten far, but he had hoped for a general experience that was slightly less frustrating than what it actually was.

Nonetheless, Fiddleford was his friend, and a trusted one despite his flawed memory. And they had to locate the Quantum Destabilizer for Stan, or else they'd have to go back to the drawing boards for different ideas on how to get rid of Bill, which he'd rather not do as long as they already had an idea in their hands.

"Alright," Ford accepted as he turned to the others. "Everybody, get in line behind Fiddleford."

Some reluctant looks were exchanged, but everyone did just as followed and began to get in line. Ford took place right behind McGucket, followed by Dipper, Wendy, Soos, and lastly, Derrick.

"Alright, y'all," McGucket announced before making his first step. "Watch the feet of the person in front of ya and just follow where they stand. We'll try to get through this as quickly as possible while also being as careful as possible."

"We are so going to die," Derrick said to himself under his breath, having little to no hope on the building situation.

"Easy does it," McGucket said as he began walking slowly across the blocks beyond the outline.

As they all walked, Ford failed to see how what they were doing could be taken as any sort of improvement to the room. The additional concept to him seemed more like a gimmick that could easily be bypassed should they be dealing with someone with floating or flight traits. A person who could hover above the ground could easily hover to the open door on the other side of the room and do whatever they pleased. The idea seemed to just bypass the entire concept behind the security room, which should be treated like a key or passcode to get into a building rather than giving one the choice to around it.

For as much as he could say at that moment, he knew to voice his criticisms once they weren't at risk of activating the room. Still, he wondered how Fiddleford came up with these ideas and how he viewed them as 'improvements'. Could it be his old age? Is he becoming too feeble for the demanding tasks that come with handling an underground lab and bomb shelter? There had to have been some appropriate reasoning for the changes he made.

As the six slowly walked along, however, Soos came to a sudden stop on two safe blocks. Not expecting his sudden freeze, Derrick found himself bumping straight into Soos's back, to which he had to quickly rebalance himself on the safe blocks that he stood on before, preventing himself from falling backward and setting the room off.

"Uh, dude? Soos, is it?" Derrick asked, recalling his name. "You gotta keep moving, man."

Dipper turned his head back to Soos and gave him a weird look. Soos himself also held an odd expression, his mouth hung open slightly and his face scrunched up.

"Soos, are you okay?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

Wendy then turned her head back to Soos as he stood right behind her. As she caught a glance at his face, her eyes bulged. She immediately knew what was up.

"Aw, crap! He's gonna sneeze!" she alerted everyone.

"Wait, what?" Ford asked as he and McGucket both turned their heads back to look over at Soos.

" _AaaaaAAAAaaaa…_ " Soos began to wail as he felt his itching nose starting to get the better of him. It was clear that a big one was coming and coming from a sizable man like him, it was gonna be near-impossible not to make any sudden movements.

"Soos, no! Don't!" Dipper tried to tell him.

"Hold it in, Soos!" Wendy shouted at him. "If you sneeze and trip, we're screwed!"

"I'm...trying... _dudes…!_ " Soos assured them as he tried to plug his nose up with his fingers. " _Trying...so...hard!_ "

"Quick! Someone say something absurd!" Ford suggested. "Maybe it can trick his brain into dropping the sneeze as he tries to process what you say!"

"Uh...something absurd!" Derrick repeated. "Maybe it can trick his brain into dropping the sneeze...oh, wow, I'm an idiot."

" _AaaaaAAAAAA…!_ "

"Uh...Soos, I've been stealing candy from the vending machine at work and I have a key to the Mystery Shack that you don't know about!" Wendy stated bluntly.

"Soos, gaming consoles are better than gaming PCs!" Dipper also stated bluntly.

" _AAAAAAAA..._ woah, woah, woah!" Soos said, his urge to sneeze immediately disappearing. "First of all, no, they are  _not!_ " He shook his head at Dipper before turning to Wendy and raising an eyebrow. "And second, do you really?"

" _Pfft!_  Of course not, man!" Wendy brushed off with an innocent smile. "Was just saying something crazy to help get your mind off the sneeze! And you see? It worked!"

"Oh, yeah! It did work!" Soos realized as he wiped a balm of sweat from his forehead. "Phew! Thanks, guys! Man, how bad would that have been if I had fallen back and set off the trap-?"

_Splat._

Everyone's eyes immediately glanced from Soos right down below on the floor beside him, where his lunch bag packed by Melody sat on an empty block after falling from his back pocket. Everyone's eyes bulged in horror as they soon turned back up to Soos, who stood motionless.

After a brief silence of shock, everyone had come to realize that nothing had happened as a result of the bag falling. Eyes glanced around, waiting for something to happen. But as time continued to go by, the room remained motionless.

"Wow, talk about two close-calls in a row," Soos humorously broke the silence as he leaned down to pick up his lunch bag. "What a cartoonish thing  _that_ would've been if that had triggered the room, huh?"

As soon as he stuffed his lunch back into his pocket, without any warning, his nose betrayed him again.

" _AAAACHOOOOOOOO!_ " Soos sneezed suddenly and violently, sending him flying back a few steps into Derrick and falling on top of him backward onto the floor.

"NO!" Ford exclaimed, reaching his hand out desperately.

It was already too late, as the near-immediate impact of the bodies slamming against the ground had triggered more than enough blocks. At that moment, the door leading into the tunnel behind them had automatically shut and tightened, as well as the door leading into the observation room.

"Oops," Soos said as he lay on the ground, realizing his mistake.

"Get off of me!" Derrick demanded as Soos continued to lay right on top of him, crushing him with his weight.

"Ah! Sorry, dude!" Soos said as he immediately jumped back to his feet and helped Derrick back up.

The entire room suddenly shook, which threw everyone off balance for a moment. Knowing what was about to happen next, everyone looked around fearfully.

"That did it," McGucket said simply, acknowledging the activation of the security system.

Random blocks in the walls, floor, and ceiling began to glow red, unveiling various symbols and images. Right after, various blocks began to stick out and slowly protrude into the room.

"Great Uncle Ford...? McGucket…?" Dipper called out, hoping either of them had the solution to the situation.

Ford patted himself down, expecting to find his journal in order to find the security code. However, he quickly remembered he no longer had the journals in his possession.

"Oh no! I don't remember the code!" Ford exclaimed fearfully. "I had written the code down in my journal! I don't have my journal anymore!"

"Calm down, Ford!" McGucket told him as he put an assuring hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry! I redid the code too!"

"You what?!" Ford exclaimed aggravatedly by this new revelation.

"It's fine! I remember it!" McGucket replied as he turned his head toward the others. "Everybody listen up! We clearly don't have a lot of time here, so we need to move quick! There are five symbols throughout this room that we need to find and push in order to get outta here! The images we need to find are a taco, a monkey, a banjo, a fedora, and a soldier riding a dolphin!"

"Wait, what the f-"

"Find those and we should be good to go!" McGucket finished.

"FIDDLEFORD!" Ford exclaimed, placing both his hands on his shoulders while giving him a stern look. " _WHY_  would you change a code using abstract ciphers and symbols into a code that uses random images that make no sense and have no correlation whatsoever?!"

"It's just easier to remember this way," McGucket casually responded with an innocent shrug, not seeing the issue.

"EASIER TO REMEMBER?!" Ford exclaimed, growing more and more frustrated by his friend's reasoning for his doings.

"Is this really a good time to be arguing over this?!" Wendy asked as she searched the room for the images McGucket had mentioned.

"She's right," McGucket nodded. "Ford, I understand you're not pleased with my decision-makin' with this bunker, but now is not the right time to go over it. We need to find these images or else we're all gonna get crushed!"

Ford held his look of frustration upon McGucket for a moment, still remaining completely flabbergasted at his reasoning for the design changes. Though he was willing to brush them aside for the sake of their own well being at that moment. Trying to keep the images that were mentioned in mind, everyone looked around at the various blocks glowing blocks that shifted throughout the room.

Soos glanced down at the floor and his eyes immediately caught sight of a glowing red taco among one of the blocks in the wall. He quickly jumped over to it and pressed it in with his hand.

"Got the taco, dudes!"

Not too long after, Dipper noticed the picture of the monkey right beside him and pressed it in.

"Got the...uh...monkey…" he said, somewhat put-off by the image.

"Banjo activated!" Ford said just as he found the banjo on a ceiling block and jumped up to press it in.

Derrick then ran over to a wall where he pushed in the fedora on a block. "I got the fedora! By internet standards, does that make me an asshole?"

"That's it! All that's left is the soldier riding a dolphin!" McGucket stated as he looked around. "If I remember correctly, it should be...THERE!"

He pointed up above at a corner across the room on a wall near the ceiling where the glowing red soldier riding a dolphin image was among a block. Many blocks were moving around it, with one block close to covering it up and preventing access to it.

"I got it!" Wendy called out as she sprinted her way to the corner of the room.

"Careful, Wendy!" Dipper called out worriedly to her, looking ahead at the tightening space she was running into.

She kept her eyes focused on the image, making sure that despite the many glowing blocks surrounding it, she knew which one she was aiming for. She began hopping on top of the blocks as they rose from the ground, making sure she would be able to reach for the elevated block. However, at that point, a slowly ascending block had gotten too close to the ceiling to allow for her full body to reach through and push the button.

Realizing she had no other choice, she simply jumped forward into the narrow space, barely managing to latch on. Her legs hung out from the space as she held on as tightly as she could to the rising block. One quick look above told her that she had a very limited amount of time to hit the image before she was crushed.

She glanced back into the space and at the image. She continued to try and propel herself further in so she could reach an arm out for it.

Everyone else stood back and witnessed her attempt, growing very anxious as the block continued to grow closer and closer to crushing her against the ceiling.

"She's gonna get crushed!" Dipper shouted aloud, beginning to panic. "McGucket, is there no other way around this?"

"I'm afraid not," he shook his head anxiously. "If she can't reach that last button, then we're  _all_ gonna get crushified... _I mean_...crushed."

"Not on my watch!" Ford shouted with a look of determination. He proceeded to stick his arm out, aiming Meridian at the wall where the door to the next room was. "Stand back, everyone!"

At that moment, he fired out a tiny pellet that flew its way toward the surface of the wall. Upon impact, it exploded, which prompted the room to shake. The explosion had no impact, and all the blocks continued to move around normally and without a scratch on the door. The shaking of the room caught everyone off balance yet again for a moment, including Wendy, who fell back slightly on her progress of climbing up.

"Not a scratch!" Ford realized as he looked at the explosion's aftermath.

"Have you forgotten?" McGucket asked. "This trap is designed to be inescapable! No small explosion like that is gonna tear through reinforced steel!"

"HEY! WATCH IT!" Wendy called out to Ford as she tried to climb back up into the button's space, giving him a distasteful look after shaking up the room with his explosion. "I don't know about you, but I kind of  _don't_  wanna die here!"

"Apologies!" Ford called back with a guilty smile, realizing that his method wasn't as helpful as he imagined it would be.

Dipper glanced back at Wendy and began to shake nervously. The gap between her and the ceiling was so tight now that he was unsure she'd even have a chance at getting herself out if she didn't push the button within the next few seconds.

"C'mon, Wendy," Soos said nervously as he took off his hat and wiped balms of sweat from his forehead. "You got this, dawg."

Wendy could feel the bill of her hat beginning to touch the ceiling. She was utterly terrified for her life at that moment but knew that it was important not to let her fear get to her. She tilted her head to the side to allow for a little more space as she stretched her arm out as far as she possibly could for the button.

" _C'mon...c'mon!_ "

She tried to push her entire body just a little bit more forward to get even closer to the button. At that point, with her body that far in and the ceiling already making contact with the side of her head, she accepted her fate. It was either her or everybody, and she had already come far enough.

" _WENDY!_ " Dipper shouted desperately, his eyes watering up.

The tips of her fingers finally made contact with the button as she started to feel her entire body feel the pressure of getting pushed against the ceiling. With the slightest bit of force she had left in her to give, she pressed the image in and shut her eyes tightly in preparation for the end.

_BZZZ!_

A buzzer suddenly blared through the room. At the same time, every single moving block came to an immediate stop. Everyone except McGucket stood frozen for a moment, trying to process their surroundings.

Wendy opened one of her tearful eyes in confusion, still unable to really move due to her being jammed between the ceiling and the block below. The tight pressure was incredibly uncomfortable and painful to her skull, and she wondered why she wasn't dead yet.

_BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!_

A sound similar to a large vehicle backing up blared just as every single block in the room proceeded to retract backward from where they initially began to protrude from. Blocks began to return back into their spaces within the walls, floor, and ceiling. At the same time, both the door from the previous room and the door into the observation deck had reopened.

McGucket smiled. "Ya see? Now there's an improvement! Now the blocks retract when all the buttons are pressed! If this were the ol' bunker, your friend would be as flat as pancake!"

"Fiddleford, I go back to my earlier statement. This  _is_ insane," he said simply, nearly at a loss for words. He no longer had the mental capability at that moment to scold his friend for his design choices. He didn't want to argue anymore. He just wanted to find the Quantum Destabilizer and get out of there.

The sudden retracting allowed Wendy to slip out of her space, sending her flat on her bottom on another block that began to slowly descend back into the floor.

"WENDY!" Dipper shouted as he and everybody else ran up to her sinking block. Just as the block completed retracting into the floor, he hugged her tightly. "Thank God! I thought you were screwed back there for a second…"

He pulled away and looked at her, his gleeful smile for her survival disappearing as soon as he saw the scarred expression drawn across her face. She stared straight forward, not even at him or anyone else. Aside from blinking, she made no effort to move either, not even hugging him back.

"W-Wendy?" Dipper stuttered worriedly. "Are you okay?"

"I dunno, dude," Soos chimed in as he looked on at her. "To me, that face looks like the exact opposite of okay."

Ford gestured for Dipper to step aside before kneeling down in front of her and looking at her for himself. He raised a concerned eyebrow as he looked on at Manly Dan's daughter, fearing for whatever the situation had brought her. Waving a hand in front of her face, he asked, "Wendy? Can you hear us?"

It took a moment, but she shook her head quickly, knocking herself out of her daze. She gently pushed his hand away from her face.

"I-I'm...I'm good…" she told him before proceeding to stand back up on her feet. "I just...I need to catch my breath..."

Without looking at anyone else, she made her way onto the observation deck by herself, leaving the others to watch her in concern.

"Poor girl. That experience seems to have traumatized her," Ford said as he shook his head sympathetically. "It's going to be hell having to explain things to Dan should things come to that."

"Dammit! This is all my fault," Dipper said as he tugged down on the ears of his hat guiltily. "She was already scared enough coming back here in the first place! I invited her along again and now she's gonna have this place embedded in her mind forever! God, she's  _so_  gonna hate me..."

"Don't be like that, dude," Soos said as he put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I'm sure Wendy thinks you mean well inviting her along. She wouldn't pin this on you."

"And with all these changes to the bunker, I think it's safe to say that most of us didn't know what we were getting into here," Ford added as he gave McGucket a quick glance. "Therefore, you shouldn't pin this on yourself either."

McGucket had caught Ford's glance and let out a guilty sigh. "I'm sorry, Stanford. Maybe I did go too far with some of these ideas after all. I guess despite how much my memory has regressed, I still haven't entirely gotten rid of the crazy Ol' Man McGucket inside me, letting it bleed into my own work. And that'll probably be a part of me that'll always stick no matter what."

Ford looked on at McGucket and noticed the guilty sincerity in his eyes. Despite his former frustrations, he found it impossible for him to scold McGucket for incompetency after all the things he knew he had been through. His mind had gone to a terrible place years ago, and while it had been getting significantly better, that didn't change the fact that at one point, it had been heavily damaged.

Damage that he still faulted himself for.

"Look, Fiddleford, you already know I'm not too pleased with a majority of these redesigns," Ford claimed before smiling. "But now that I'm here, I do think that we can work together again to make this place into something that's  _truly_  sufficient and convenient for the both of us."

McGucket smiled, grateful that he wasn't mad. "I think so too."

After a brief moment, he looked around the room, and came to a quick realization of where they still stood.

"Uh, I don't mean to sound ungrateful about the current matters, but we should all be getting a move on now," he said as he gestured for the doorway with his cane. "This room only shuts off for a few minutes after all the buttons are pressed. The last thing we wanna do is reactivate this thing."

"Good point," Ford agreed with a nod.

"C'mon, y'all. Let's find that gun," McGucket said as he led Ford and the others out of the security room and onto the observation deck. As he walked out, he immediately began making his way across the deck over to the door leading into the decontamination chamber. "I'll admit, I haven't been tinkerin' much here on the deck. If there's any place I could've put that weapon, it's gotta be somewhere out in the lab. Perhaps, I had taken it out there for chemical testing and such like we used to do with all our weapons. I don't remember doing so with this one, but it'd be the most plausible location if it wasn't up in the cache."

"It's definitely worth checking out then," Ford said as he followed, glancing over his shoulder behind him at the others following. "Alright, everybody. One-by-one through the decontaminator now."

"Oh, boy! I loved this thing!" Soos shouted enthusiastically as he recalled the chamber, quickly running ahead of everyone else to go inside. "Me first!"

"Erm, I'm not sure I understand how you find enjoyment in this, but, uh, as you wish," Ford claimed as he shut the door with Soos inside. "Just pull on the cord hanging from the ceiling and-!"

_BEEP!_

WSSHH _!_

" _WOO-HOO-HOOOOO!_ " Soos cheered inside as the sounds of the decontamination were heard.

"Seriously, I think that's a man worth studying one of these days," Ford claimed while glancing over at McGucket.

"We always got spare coolin' chambers for freezin' if needed," McGucket said with a shrug.

Dipper's attention was suddenly distracted as he looked around and realized Wendy wasn't standing along with them. Instead, he caught her sitting on the ground against a wall by one of the computers.

She had her knees upward and laid her arms on them while resting her head on top. Her eyes stared off to the side, not paying attention to what he or any of the other boys were doing. Her face didn't hold the same expression as it did immediately after her experience in the security room and instead held a more crestfallen one.

Ford told him not to blame himself, but it was hard not to as he continued to look at her in her current state. It was completely unlike any look he had ever seen from her before.

"Trust me, dude," Derrick said as he walked up beside him, catching his eyes looking at her. "She'll be fine as long as you give her some room. I mean, that's all  _I_ had needed."

Dipper raised an eyebrow at this comment. "What do you mean that's all you…?"

Dipper had turned to look at him, but he didn't stick around. Instead, he had walked over to the decontamination chamber and stepped inside with Ford closing it right after him. He wasn't sure what to make of what he had said, but it didn't really lower his concern for Wendy.

After Derrick had gone through, Ford opened the chamber back up and glanced over at him. "Dipper? You coming?"

Dipper hesitated for a moment. "I'll...I'll be right there."

"Very well then," Ford said as he stepped inside the chamber himself, preparing to close the door behind him. "We won't go too far."

He shut the chamber door shut and initiated the decontamination process for himself, leaving Dipper alone on the observation deck with Wendy.

He turned back over to her, fiddling with his hands awkwardly as he tried to come up with something to say. "Are you...coming with us?"

She sat silently and didn't look up at him. He was able to catch her eyes looking further down instead.

"I'll catch up," she simply replied in a soft, sorrow voice.

He figured, and almost immediately regretted asking the question too.

_She almost got crushed to death a few minutes ago and you're asking her if she's ready to spring back into action again? What's wrong with you?!_

"Are you sure you'll be alright by yourself back here?"

She didn't answer right away and continued to refuse eye contact, still staring off to the side. "I'll be fine, man. I just...gimme a second, that's all."

Dipper stared at her guiltily as she just sat there, continuing to look away from him. He knew it was perfectly justified though, and let the guilt eat him up. Lowering his head, he turned away and walked over to the decontamination chamber, opening it up and stepping inside.

"I'm sorry…" he told her finally before shutting the chamber door behind him, leaving her alone.

There, she continued to just keep her head rested among her arms, staring over to the side as she continued to try and just process everything that had just happened.

* * *

Mabel's date with Ryland wasn't going too great. It wasn't because they were having problems with one another. They actually enjoyed each other's company quite well.

The company they didn't enjoy was Jeff's.

Throughout the date, Jeff and his gnomes had constantly returned in various different attempts to try and woo Mabel. However, she thought they came off more as pestering than endearing. Especially considering how dimwitted their attempts were.

Ryland had begun telling her a story as they ate his mother's soufflé. It was something about him and his brother growing up and she'd paid as close attention as possible as he told it. Even then, she couldn't help but gaze at his eyes, which naturally made her tune out the story.

What immediately snapped her out of it was noticing the sudden appearance of a giant gnome monster made of assimilated gnomes behind her view of Ryland. They both turned to look up at the monster, noticing Jeff at the very top of it. In the hand of the monster was a tree, which they offered to Mabel like a bouquet of flowers. Jeff had claimed it was to replace to the ones the Shmebulock ate and claimed it was even better than the ones Ryland had brought.

Before either her or Ryland could say anything, a mother bird that had nested within the tree they held flew out and started to attack Jeff. This caused him to freak out and prompt the gnomes to run. In response, the gnome monster dropped the tree and ran off into the forest, with the bird continuing to attack Jeff as they did.

That wasn't the last of them, as they came back a little later. This time, without the form of the giant gnome monster. Instead, Jeff came with a small pack of gnomes, and he approached Mabel with a poem in hand that he claimed to have written himself.

_Roses are red,_

_Violets are blue,_

_I promise this time,_

_I won't kidnap you_

Jeff stopped right after, as he became disgusted by the breadcrumbs that were all over his paper, much to Shmebulock's guilt. He started to berate him, but it didn't last long, as another bird started attacking Jeff because of the breadcrumbs. This resulted in him and the gnomes running off and retreating yet again, leaving Mabel still unimpressed.

They came back once again just a little while after though. This time, they quickly put together a set of cardboard boxes with a hole poked through. Once it was set up, they began to put on a puppet show, much to Mabel's further annoyance after her  _last_ experience with puppets.

The show went on for a little bit, with Jeff and his gnomes telling a convoluted story about a girl falling in love with a gnome. The story essentially went on to paint Jeff's character as some amazing, perfect gnome worthy of being loved by a human, but Mabel wasn't buying any of it for a second and only continued to grow more irritated the longer the show went on.

That was when Ryland had an idea and grabbed ahold of his soufflé dish, which was empty at that point except for a bunch of crumbs at the bottom. With a quick swipe, he pitched the crumbs from the dish into the cardboard stage the gnomes had set up, getting all over the gnomes inside, including Jeff.

Within a few seconds, Jeff and the other gnomes inside had quickly burst out from the cardboard in disgust and began to retreat once again. At the same time they retreated, they were attacked by a bunch of birds interested in the crumbs that were covered in. Mabel and Ryland simply laughed together as they watched the whole thing unfold, with Mabel giving him an admiring look for his clever thinking.

* * *

"I don't get it!" Jeff exclaimed frustratedly as his bird wounds were patched up by a gnome nurse inside a medical tree stump. "Why isn't anything we're doing working?"

"Maybe she's just not looking to go out with a gnome, Jeff," Steve told him as he received bandages from another gnome nurse.

"But I'm the dang president!" Jeff exclaimed. "I got rid of the monarchy for her! Now I try to actually appeal to her heart and instead she responds by laughing when we get pecked by birds?!"

"Maybe we should just go back to the old fashioned way and kidnap her," Carson suggested. "It worked a whole lot better than whatever we're trying to do now."

"Yeah, also, this presidential system sucks," Jason claimed, his eyes still bandaged up. "We need a queen! Bring back the monarchy!"

"Yeah!"

"Queen!"

"Kidnap the girl!"

"No more president!"

"Shmebulock!"

"NO KIDNAPPING!" Jeff burst out irritatedly at all his rebelling gnomes. "We're not going back to those ways! We are sticking to our guns and we're going to win over Mabel the right way! The  _presidential_ way!"

"You mean, the  _stupid_ way?" Carson claimed out of annoyance.

" _YOU'RE_  STUPID!" Jeff shouted as he pointed an angry finger at Carson.

"NO,  _YOU'RE_  STUPID!" Carson argued.

"ALL OF YOU GUYS ARE STUPID!" Steve jumped in.

"SHMEBULOCK!" Shmebulock also chimed in.

" _You watching this?_ "

" _Oh, yeah, I'm watching._ "

The gnomes shifted their attention from their intensifying argument to the voices they heard outside the stump coming from Ryland and Mabel. The gnomes glanced around at one another real quick before simultaneously agreeing to go check out what was happening.

They stepped out from the medical stump, cautiously keeping an eye out for any more birds. As they walked along, they placed their heads through the bushes and looked around.

They spotted Mabel sitting along the rocks by the river, her feet bare and dipped in the flowing water. She looked up above at the waterfall, where Ryland stood stripped down to his swimming trunks. He looked down from the waterfall, mentally measuring the height.

"Is that too high for you, tough guy?" Mabel called out to him teasingly.

"Nah!" Ryland shook his head. "More like not high enough!"

From the bushes, Jeff was met with an idea. He glanced around at his fellow gnomes and smiled. "Boys, I have a plan…"

* * *

Ryland glanced back at a set of rocks further up the river and noticed a slightly red patch on a rock that he recognized.

"Hey, I think I still see a blood stain from my leg when I crashed here!"

"Woah, nice! Send me a picture of it!" Mabel called back up to him. "I wanna save it for my scrapbook!"

"I'll come back for it later," Ryland said as he walked back up to the edge of the waterfall, preparing himself. "But, for now… _WOO!_ "

He jumped from the top of the waterfall and dove down feet first into the river below. His head soon emerged from the water and he held a wide, adrenaline-filled smile on his face as he looked back over at Mabel.

"Told you I could do it!" he shouted as began swimming back.

"I don't know...I didn't see a flip…" Mabel claimed as she smiled daringly back at him.

"Right, well, if there's anything that I've learned about first dates, it's not to risk getting yourself killed," Ryland said as he climbed himself back onto land and shook his head, flicking some of the water out of his long hair. "The second date though?  _That's_ when all bets are off."

"Consider my expectations high," Mabel claimed. "That jump, though? I'm not sure if I'd say the same…"

"Hey, if you think you can do better, then be my guest," Ryland offered as he gestured over to the waterfall.

"Well, if there's anything that  _I've_ learned about first dates, it's not to risk ruining your good outfit," Mabel said as she gestured to her sundress.

"Fair enough," Ryland said as he grabbed his shirt and put it back on. "If I have my standards, then it's only fair for you to have yours."

"Right," Mabel nodded with a playfully sassy hair flip. "But, joking aside, that really was impressive."

"Thanks," he replied as he sat down beside her on the rocks. "I've fallen into this river twice, and that was the first time it was actually intentional!"

Mabel chuckled. "Well, it was sure bold of you for willing to try something  _that_  crazy on the first date."

" _But was it bold enough?!_ "

The two both looked up at the waterfall and promptly spotted Jeff and a few gnomes behind him. He stood wearing his own blue swimming trunks, looking down at the two.

"Ugh! Not you  _again!_ " Mabel groaned annoyedly as she spotted him.

"Dude, seriously, this is starting to get old," Ryland called out to him with a tired look.

"Well, your face is getting old!" Jeff jeered at him.

"I mean, yeah. That's called aging, bro," Ryland spoke back.

" _Pfft_ , good one," Mabel couldn't help but chuckle at his comeback.

" _Hardy-har-har!_ Very funny!" Jeff mocked, growing frustrated by their snickering.

"Jeff, what's it gonna take for you to just leave me alone?" Mabel asked. "I'm never going to go out with you!"

"Mabel, I know our rocky past and upbringing has left a stain on our relationship," Jeff began. "But I want you to know that I'm here to make things right! We want to please you and your heart, and so we're not going to kidnap you!"

"Look, if we're being honest, I've been past the kidnapping stuff already," Mabel admitted. "The only 'stain' in our relationship is the obvious fact that I'm human and... _YOU'RE A BUNCH OF GNOMES!_ "

"We may be just a bunch of gnomes…but we're a bunch of gnomes with heart, pride, and skill!" Jeff declared as he raised a fist in the air. "Which is why I'm challenging the blondie's dive!"

Ryland stared blankly at Jeff for a moment. "...what?"

"That's right!" Jeff nodded. "You wanted to see a flip, Mabel? Well, you're going to see a flip, alright! And that'll prove that  _we're_ the superior choice for a boyfriend!"

Mabel and Ryland just stared blankly at Jeff, dumbfounded by the stupidity of his plan. Ryland had absolutely no idea how to feel and debated in his head whether or not he should truly feel challenged or not.

"I'm so sorry about all of this," Mabel said as he turned to Ryland, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Anyways, Mabel," Jeff said as he walked up to the edge of the waterfall, preparing to make his dive. "Let me show you how it's...d-d-done..."

One look straight down from the top of the waterfall was all it took to make Jeff feel uneasy. While mentally measuring the height, he nervously gulped and began to feel reluctant to go through with his plan.

"I can't do this," he said quietly as he stared straightforward.

"What?" Carson asked from beside him, unable to hear.

"I said, I can't do this!" Jeff repeated anxiously. "This is way too high for a gnome! We need to rethink this!"

"You made all of us climb up here to give you support and now you're telling us this was a bad idea?" Steve questioned, giving an annoyed look. "Which means we came up here for  _nothing?_ "

"Yeah, sure! Whatever!" Jeff nodded frantically as he began to shake. "Who cares if you came for nothing? I'm your president! You guys are supposed to do everything I command you to do anyway! So stop acting like a bunch of babies!"

" _Grrrr….SHMEBULOCK!_ " Shmebulock shouted angrily as he walked up to Jeff. He proceeded to shove Jeff down the waterfall, sending him plummeting toward the bottom as he screamed for his life.

" _AHHHHHHHHHHH!_ "

_SPLAT!_

He landed flat on his front side in the water, barely leaving much of a splash. He floated along the river with is arms and legs spread out, appearing as though the fall had knocked him out.

" _OH!_ " Mabel and Ryland simultaneously winced at Jeff's flat landing.

"Look, Shmebulock, I thought about doing the same," Carson admitted as he and the other gnomes on standby looked over at him. "But here's the thing: I  _thought_ about it. I didn't actually  _do it_. Whether we like it or not, the guy is still in charge. If he's dead, you'll have assassinated our first gnome president. What's going to happen to you then, huh?  _Think_ about it."

"Shmebulock…" Shmebulock moped dejectedly.

Mabel and Ryland continued to watch as Jeff's body floated along the river, eventually washing up on top of the rocks along the edge. Still, he lay there motionless and it was unknown to them whether he was even conscious or not.

"Is he dead?" Ryland asked, actually feeling a certain level of concern as he looked on at the motionless body.

At that moment, another bird landed on Jeff and started pecking and attacking him.

"OW! OW!  _OW!_ " Jeff exclaimed painfully, suddenly jumping off the rocks and starting to run around in circles as the bird chased him.

"Nah, he's fine!" Mabel exclaimed with an amused smirk.

The two then burst out laughing as they watched Jeff get chased around by the bird. While they held some concern for him previously, knowing that he was still alive and appeared mostly alright mended that for them. The coincidental timing of the bird's return only added to their amusement.

But Jeff was far from amused. Just as he managed to shoo the bird away, he focused his attention back to the laughing couple. Seeing the amusement in Mabel's eyes already stung enough, but seeing Ryland laughing put him way over the line. So far over the line that he could feel his face burning with anger as he finally had enough with the nonsense. He tried to play nice, but it clearly wasn't working.

And now, he had finally run out of patience.

"THAT'S IT!" he shouted angrily, his voice loud enough to echo throughout the forest, garnering the attention of the gnomes up above as well as the attention of Mabel and Ryland. "I'm done playing nice! You think this is funny?! Well, we'll see who's laughing after  _this!_ " He turned back to the forest and placed his hands around his mouth. "GNOMES OF THE FOREST... _ASSEMBLE!_ "

His words echoed throughout the forest once again, garnering smiles from the gnomes at the top of the waterfall.

"Finally! Back in business!" Steve exclaimed happily as he and the other gnomes proceeded to start quickly making their way down to him.

At the same time, several other gnomes from all parts of the forest began making their way through the bushes to meet him. Soon enough, hundreds of gnomes were seen assembling up with Jeff to form the giant gnome monster once again, leaving Mabel and Ryland to watch in curiosity, but not so much fear.

"MABEL PINES!" Jeff named as he stood at the top of the newly assimilated gnome monster, standing right before the two.

"Oh, what now? Are you gonna try to pick me another tree?" Mabel asked in an annoyed tone.

"Actually, this time we're gonna pick  _YOU!_ " Jeff shouted.

"Pick me...a what?" Mabel asked, confused. Suddenly, the assimilated gnome leaned down and picked her up. "Hey!  _HEY!_ "

"Woah! What the hell?!" Ryland asked as he was also picked up by the giant gnome. "What gives?"

"I tried to appeal to your heart, Mabel," Jeff began as the monster lifted it's hand up to him. "But you laughed in my face! I tried to be sweet and prove to you that I, as a gnome, have changed!"

"And what is  _this_ proving? That you're still the same?" Mabel asked as she tried to struggle her way out of the giant gnome's hand while also feeling uncomfortable at the fact she was essentially covered in a bunch of little gnomes. "You said you weren't going to kidnap me this time! You even wrote it in your poem!"

"Ha! Jokes on you! I didn't even write that poem!" Jeff admitted. "I just ripped out a few pages from Shmebulock's poetry book collection! The guy's actually not a bad poet!"

"Shmebulock!" Shmebulock nodded from below with a smile.

"Am I supposed to be impressed here?" Mabel asked.

"I've been trying all day to impress you!" Jeff exclaimed angrily. "But all you've done is push me away!"

"Look, man," Ryland chimed in. "I don't know if you were listening earlier, but she's kind of on a date with  _me_ , so…"

" _SHUT UP!_ "

"Okay."

"You see, Jeff? That's just what I mean!" Mabel claimed as she narrowed her eyes at him. "Aside from the fact that dating a gnome would be a  _whole_ new low for me, you're just a jerk! A stubborn, selfish jerk! One who can't take a hint from a girl that doesn't want to go out with him! If you truly cared about appealing to me and my heart, you'd leave me alone and get it through that fat gnome head of yours that I will never,  _ever_ be with you! But as you are right now, neither you or any of your gnome friends know a thing about love and never will!"

Jeff processed her scolding and stared at her silently for a moment.

"Never, huh?" he asked. "Well, then...why learn something new when we could stick to what we already know  _best?_ " With a sinister grin, he pointed off in a direction within the forest. "TAKE THEM AWAY!"

" _AHHH!_ " the two screamed fearfully as the gnome monster proceeded to start walking off through the forest with both of them in hand.

* * *

"Now I know the changes I've made to the bunker so far don't have the best reception," McGucket said as he walked alongside Ford and the others into the lab. "But here's a change that's  _objectively_ more intuitive." He stopped walking and pointed out a set of tubes installed to the side. "Behold! The updated coolin' chamber!"

Ford walked up to one of the cooling system tubes for closer examination, surprised to find himself actually impressed. "Intriguing. I actually do admire the new design you've given it. But what exactly did you update about it?"

"I've redesigned the workings of the liquid nitrogen vessels for more intricate freezing methods," McGucket explained. "The rewired connection allows for faster freezing over a longer time span, as well an emergency procedure that uses water for freezing as a backup in case the nitrogen core goes on lockdown. As long as the wire is attached to any source of water, it'll begin a quick-freezing process. Of course, the process isn't as reliable is liquid nitrogen, but it is an emergency procedure after all."

"Impressive. A very welcome modification, indeed, Fiddleford," Ford said with a smile as he looked around at the system, acknowledging a few of the already frozen tubes containing certain creatures. "I see you've also held onto some of the old specimens while I was gone."

Derrick looked around at the bunker specimens, one of which included a burgundy-skinned creature with a green flannel and a face comprising of a large mouth. There was a label attached to the tube that read 'Mr. What's-His-Face'.

"Does this dude even  _have_ a face?" Derrick asked with a raised eyebrow. "I don't know. To me, that looks like more teeth than face."

"I'm just glad that we don't have to see the Shapeshifter again," Dipper claimed as he looked around at the tubes, unable to find a sign of the Shifter in any sort of frozen form. Not even the last one he saw him as, that being himself back when he was twelve. "At the very least, we can thank McGucket for ridding us of him."

"Yup. Shifty's been long gone," McGucket nodded as he scratched his head. "At least, as far as I can remember. I don't ever recall seeing him turn up around here in any of my prior visits."

"What do you mean?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow. "You're the one who got rid of him, weren't you?"

"I never claimed to have gotten rid of him," McGucket clarified. "I just said that he was gone. I haven't seen that ol' scare for over thirty years at this point."

"But...how can that be?" Dipper asked, growing confused. "When we were here four years ago, we froze him in one of these tubes after all the time he had been loose before. You never came down here, found him frozen, and then dealt with him?"

"Nope," McGucket shook his head. "I never found Shifty frozen at all. I just came down here four years ago and freed you when  _you_ were frozen in the chamber. Remember?"

Dipper's heart sunk at that moment as he immediately realized what McGucket was talking about. "W-what?"

"Wait...Dipper?" Ford asked as he turned to him upon catching what McGucket had mentioned. " _You_  were trapped in the cooling chamber?"

"Dipper wasn't frozen," Soos chimed in, making note of what he recalled. "McGucket's probably talking about the Shapeshifter when he shifted into Dipper after we fought him last time and went all 'AHHHHHH' on him before getting frozen."

There was a moment of silence before he realized that all added up to.

"Oh...I just...I just figured that out...oh, we are  _so_  in trouble…"

"You mean…" Ford began, his eye twitching in horror as he turned to McGucket. "F, you freed the Shapeshifter?!"

"What?! I-I didn't know it was the Shapeshifter!" McGucket defended upon the realization of what he had done four years ago. "I thought it was Dipper! It looked just like him and I thought he came down here and had an accident or somethin'!"

"Where did he go after you freed him?" Dipper asked, growing more and more paranoid by the minute.

"You...I mean... _he_  just claimed he was gonna get outta here and go back home! He ran out of the lab and I never saw him again!" McGucket claimed as he tried to remember the incident. "Well, I saw  _you_ again...but I didn't see the Shifter! Ah, I don't think I rightly know! But I didn't see him actually  _leave_  the bunker though!"

"So the Shapeshifter could be out of the bunker and loose in the world?" Soos asked, growing concerned.

"Or maybe he's still in here waiting after all these years to try and kill us!" Dipper fearfully believed.

"Everybody calm down!" Ford tried to coax. "There's reason for concern, but let's not jump to any immediate conclusions! It's been four years after all. As long as we're here in the bunker, it's us who need to keep a keen eye out for any signs of the Shifter's presence. That and the heavy importance of sticking together."

"Sticking together. Right," Dipper agreed, knowing that was their best option at that point.

Right at that moment though, there was a series of beeping sounds heard, as if buttons were being pressed. A quick glance to the side and Dipper spotted Derrick standing next to a large central control panel in the lab. He appeared to be looking down at it with a confused expression on his face with his hands outstretched.

"Derrick! What are you doing?!" Dipper called out as he walked right up to him.

"Nothing! I was just looking around!" Derrick defended, raising his hands up innocently.

"What did I tell you? Don't touch anything around here!" Dipper angrily reminded him. "We need to be on the lookout for the Shapeshifter!"

"Dude, literally all I did was look around at this panel!" Derrick tried to assure him. "Trust me! I didn't touch anything!"

At that moment, the power suddenly went out and all the lights in the laboratory went off. Within a second, the entire lab became pitch dark, following by the sound of a generator shutting down. At the same time, there was a series of sequenced banging noises against a metallic surface that were unidentifiable but sounded close to those in the room.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Derrick said unenthusiastically at the sudden timing of the power outage.

"AH! TOTAL DARKNESS CONSUMES US ALL!" Soos screamed in panic through the dark.

"WHAT HAPPENED?!" McGucket asked fearfully. "WHY DID EVERYONE VANISHIFY?!"

"Something must've happened to the power!" Ford realized. "Fiddleford, we still have a working emergency generator, correct?"

"Uh, yes!" McGucket remembered. "There's a switch among one of these walls, but I can't see a thing!"

"Allow me," Ford said as he turned on Meridian's flashlight, emitting a spot of light that provided slight luminance to the room. Everyone turned their heads in the light's direction just as it turned on.

Now able to slightly see through the darkness, McGucket glanced around at the lab walls, searching for the switch to activate the emergency generator.

"Ah! There it is!" he said as his eyes fell upon it.

He proceeded to walk over to the switch with his cane, placing his hand on the lever and pulling it upward. As he flipped it, there was a startup whirring noise. The ceiling lights slowly began to turn on again, though emitting a red hue now. Machines began to function as normal and everybody in the room was soon able to see their surroundings again.

"Is everyone okay?" Ford asked, looking around at the others after turning off his wristwatch light.

Dipper cleared his throat. "Yeah. We're fine."

"I'm good!" Soos anxiously nodded. "Kinda freaked out, but I'm good!"

Dipper narrowed his eyes and turned back to Derrick angrily. "What's wrong with you,  _man?_  Didn't I just tell you not to touch anything?"

"What?!" Derrick questioned. "I told you I didn't touch anything! Again, I was just looking!"

"Well, something surely happened over here," Ford said as he walked past the two, crouching down beside the control panel. On the floor, he picked up a large wire with a sliced off end, making note of the shape. "The lab's main power cable was cut. Manually done by the looks of it."

"I knew it!" Dipper exclaimed as he poked a finger in Derrick's chest. "I knew you were guilty!"

"WHAT?!" Derrick questioned, absolutely floored by his own friend's accusations. " _WHY_  would I cut the freakin' power cable?  _Think_ , Dipper! What motivation could I  _POSSIBLY_ have to wanna do something like that?!"

"I'm sorry. Should I not blame the person closest to the chopped wire?" Dipper questioned, giving Derrick a threatening look.

While he had a reason to be blamed for the sign earlier, Derrick was absolutely baffled by Dipper's use of the blame-game. He had defended him from bullies in school and had been one of his only friends back in Piedmont for four years. How is he repaid? Being ratted out for something he didn't even do. Some friend he was.

"Why you…" Derrick said as he began to roll up his sleeve.

"Enough! Both of you!" Ford shouted, getting in the middle of the two as he detected their growing tensions. He glanced down at Dipper and gave him a slightly disturbed look. "Especially  _you_ , Dipper. I don't know what's made you so aggressive toward your own friend all of the sudden."

"And here I thought he  _was_ my friend," Derrick said as he narrowed his eyes at Dipper.

"Look, there's no time for this foolishness," Ford said as he dropped the cut wire. "This wire was freshly cut, which is what caused the outage. It clearly wasn't an accident. Unless this Derrick fellow isn't that type of boy you say he is, Dipper, then I have all the reason to believe that the five of us aren't alone in here. If the Shapeshifter has been set loose four years ago, then going back to Dipper's theory, perhaps he has stayed down here for all this time waiting for our return."

"Why would he do that though?" McGucket asked. "Why wouldn't he just leave? Especially after all the times that I've been down here?"

"Because he wants something…" Ford concluded as he patted the side of his coat, narrowing his eyes as he looked around. "And I have a feeling I know what…"

"Wait, if he did  _just_ cut that wire, doesn't that mean he could be anywhere in this room... _watching us?_ " Soos asked Ford with a nervous whisper.

With this realization in mind, Ford quickly knew Soos had a point. If the Shifter was down there and had cut the wire, then it was definitely watching them at that moment. And if they were being watched, that meant he already had them cataloged as transformations of his own. Which meant if they didn't keep track of one another at that point, the Shifter could easily insert itself into their group and flank them.

"We need to move," Ford whispered as he aimed his wristwatch forward, the laser setting ready to fire at any point he needed to. "Group up and stick together. Nobody split up or go on their own."

"We should go back to the weapon cache!" McGucket quietly suggested. "Stock up on weapons so we're armed to fight back!"

"No. Too risky," Ford shook his head. "Plus we don't wanna bring Wendy even more disturbance by bringing this past her. What we should do is push toward the chemical weapon testing station. If it's still set up similarly to how I remember, then there should be a set of weapons we can use there if needed. At the same time, it'll also be our chance to find the Quantum Destabilizer."

"What're we waiting for then?️" Dipper asked as he grouped up with everyone else. "We need to get moving before the Shifter finds us!"

"Fiddleford, lead the way," Ford told McGucket as he turned the opposite direction, still aiming Meridian. "I have our backs."

McGucket nodded and proceeded to start making his way in the direction of where he knew the chemical weapon testing station was located. He walked slowly, keeping little distance between himself and the others to follow Ford's idea of sticking together in order to minimize potential manipulation from the Shapeshifter.

As the five walked, there was an odd banging noise that continued to persist against a metallic surface. It hadn't been heard before the outage occurred, which made it stick out more as the group focused on their surroundings. It simply continued to echo throughout the lab, which brought a slight disturbance to some.

"Anyone else hear some sorta metal banging?" Soos addressed.

"I hear it too. Odd, indeed," Ford nodded. "Any ideas, F?"

"I'm not entirely sure," McGucket admitted as he tried to process the sound. "It could just be the AC unit under the emergency generator power. It has been a while since the last time it was turned on."

"Yeah. I figured it was nothing that to worry about," Dipper said as he looked backward in the direction of the lab.

Across the lab, he glanced over at a metal cabinet. He grinned sinisterly, which went completely unnoticed by everyone else. He then turned back and continued following the others out of the lab.

From the metal cabinet, however, were the metallic banging noises that were heard earlier. The cabinet doors shook each time there was a hit.

From the inside, the real Dipper Pines sat in the confined space. His hands and legs were tied up with rope and his mouth taped was shut. Encased in pure darkness, he continuously banged on the cabinet doors, hoping to grab someone's attention in order to warn them of what was happening and what was to come.

" _MMMMM!_ "

 


	32. Back to the Bunker: Part 3

_WHOOOSH!_

A bag had been suddenly pulled off of Ryland's head, flashing his eyes with the sudden shine of daylight. His eyes continued to adjust as he looked around again. As he looked down, he noticed he had several ropes tying his entire body down to a slanted board. He tried to pull himself free but he quickly found that the ropes were tightly tied and found himself hardly able to move.

He narrowed his eyes angrily. "You damn gnomes! I swear once I'm free I'm gonna…huh?"

His eyes bulged as he looked around and noticed where he was. Surrounding him were the round walls of some sort of wooden coliseum where he was placed in the middle.

The coliseum itself wasn't very large. Up above on the walls and in the seats were hundreds of gnomes watching and booing him. The seats were designed for the gnomes themselves. While the coliseum was large enough to seat hundreds of gnomes, that didn't make it very viable for a lot of normal humans. It did, however, have a very tall height, as it used many of the surrounding tall trees of the forest as support.

The gnomes booed Ryland from above, with some throwing pinecones and rocks at him.

"Hey!  _Hey!_ " Ryland shouted as some of the objects thrown at him painfully made their mark. "I already bruise myself enough from my own stupidity! I don't need gnomes to top it off!"

"Ryland!" a voice cried out to him from the side. "Up here!"

He glanced around to one of the other walls and spotted Mabel along one of the coliseum seats. Like him, she was also tied down to a slanted board, but she was also surrounded by a bunch of gnomes, making escape even more improbable for her.

"Mabel!" Ryland called back to her. "Where the hell are we?"

"Why, you're in the Gnomoseum, blondie!" Jeff announced as he stood directly across from Ryland on the wall above a large gate. "The largest, deadliest,  _most inflammable_  gnome battle arena in Gravity Falls! Which isn't very large to you humans, actually, but, by gnome standards, it's pretty big. So, yeah! The largest!"

"Why'd you bring us here? What do you want with us?!" Ryland asked as he continued to try to struggle out of the ropes he was tied in.

"I thought it was obvious. We wanted Mabel... _sooo_ , we kidnapped her," Jeff explained upfront. "And we kidnapped you because you were getting in the way. So, uh...yeah. Now, we're gonna kill you."

"WHAT?!" Ryland exclaimed, growing panicked.

"I'm sorry, was that not loud enough?" Jeff asked before putting his hands around his mouth to further amplify his voice. "I SAID...WE...ARE GOING...TO  _KILL_ YOU! Was that better?"

"This has gone too far, Jeff!" Mabel called out to him from her position on the wall. "It's not unlike you to stoop low, but I didn't think you were  _this_ bad! We helped you during Bill's invasion for crying out loud!"

"What's past is past, and what's now is now," Jeff said carelessly. "You see, Mabel, the gnomes are a very different race now than we were four years ago! We've gone through many governmental changes, disputes, and even a civil war! But we're past all of that now and we're at the point of rebuilding our colony. Part of that process involves finding the proper method of leadership. I was ready to make a change and give up the monarchy, and I did it for you!"

"Well, that was your first mistake: assuming that I wanted anything to do with you!" Mabel replied with a disgusted look.

"I suppose it was," Jeff admitted. "But you were given a chance! It's a shame you didn't take it. Now, instead of winning your heart, I gotta pry it from your date's perfectly tanned hands!"

Ryland glanced down at his hands, examining his own tan. "Huh, I've never been so conflicted about whether I should cuss someone out or say thanks."

"Anyways…" Jeff began as he looked down at the gnomes next to gate below him. "... _RELEASE THE BEAST!_ "

The gnomes below nodded and proceeded to walk over to the opposite sides of the gate. One each side, there was a lever, which each gnome approached. At the same time, the two put their hands on the levers and pulled down, prompting the gate to begin slowly opening up. As it opened, there was an audible growling coming from the inside, which was too dark for anyone to be able to see through.

"Oh God," Ryland said worriedly as he heard the growling, unsure of what to expect.

"Jeff, what is that thing?" Mabel asked, growing panicked at what he had unleashed upon Ryland. "Some sorta giant three-headed mountain lion or something?"

"Oh, no! Something I think you both are much more familiar with!" Jeff replied with a grin. "You remember the Guardian of the Gnomes, don't you? Once owned by the  _oh-so-mighty_  Thomas the Great and his Timberland Gnomes?"

"THE FIRE-BREATHING DRAGON?!" Ryland asked fearfully once he recalled the creature.

"Yep! We've since renamed her Theresa!" Jeff mentioned. "And not too long after we took her under our wing, we made a great discovery..."

As the gates finished opening up, Ryland's eyes glanced forward anxiously. The ground shook as the creature inside began to walk forward, the steps getting louder as it got closer. Soon, it finally stepped out into the light, revealing itself. Mabel and Ryland's eyes both bulged in utter surprise to see that the creature wasn't the same large and might dragon they saw prior, but a smaller, infant-looking red dragon that appeared confused as it walked out into the daylight.

" _...she was going to become a mother!_ "

The gnomes cheered as the baby dragon appeared, whereas Ryland held his look of terror as he sat right in the middle of the Gnomoseum, unable to move or escape. He knew he was a clear target the second the dragon laid eyes on him.

"Theresa's been a bit out of it since laying her eggs, so instead of sending her out to burn you alive, we sent one of her children to do her bidding," Jeff explained.

" _NOOOoooOOoo!_  You separated her from one of her babies?!" Mabel cried out, her heart aching at the mere thought of it. " _YOU MONSTER!_ "

At that moment, a gnome stepped up to Mabel's head and placed their hands over her mouth, silencing her. She continued to try and shout and scream things out, but nothing came out besides muffled noises.

"Thanks, Steve!" Jeff nodded thankfully in his direction for quieting Mabel. "Now, where were we? Oh, right!  _BURN THE BLONDE!_ "

The dragon still appeared confused as it stood out in the open of the Gnomoseum. It looked all around at the gnomes surrounding them above the walls and occasionally Ryland. Each time it looked at him, he froze fearfully, bracing himself as much as he could for whatever it would do to him.

"AH! How can something be so cute and so terrifying at the same time?!" Ryland asked as he turned his head away, shutting his eyes tightly as the dragon looked at him yet again.

"What are you waiting for?!" Jeff asked the dragon impatiently. "Stop looking around at everything and burn the boy! We don't have all day! Actually, we do, but we're not trying to prolong a good burning here! Shmebulock has barbecue plans!"

However, the dragon began to whimper fearfully as it looked around. It was too confused and didn't know where it was or where its mother was. This prompted it to grow progressively antsier as it looked around, beginning to huff repeatedly. Ryland looked on curiously while remaining somewhat horrified.

Jeff raised a concerned eyebrow as it saw the dragon beginning to act up. He looked down below at the gatekeepers inside the arena. "Hey! One of you go and try to calm him down! Something's going on with him."

The gnomes looked at one another hesitantly before one just decided to follow his order. He ran up to the dragon as it continued to huff and look around anxiously.

"Hey, boy! Over here, boy!" the gnome waved, trying to grab its attention. It worked, as the dragon proceeded to look down at him, studying him. "That's right! Everything's okay! You're alright!" He then pointed over at Ryland. "You see that tied up kid over there in the middle? What we're gonna need you to do is…"

The gnome was suddenly cut off by increased whimpering of the baby dragon. It began huffing again, with smoke soon beginning to steam from its small nostrils. It then proceeded to take a very quick breath before opening its mouth and firing a large fireball directly at the gnome.

"AH!" the gnome shouted just as it jumped out of the way of the fireball. Instead, the fireball hit the ground and against the edge between the wall and the ground, spreading a bunch of flames out among the wooden wall of the Gnomoseum.

"WHAT THE-?!" Jeff shouted as he witnessed the event before his eyes. As he looked over at the impact of the fireball, he noticed the flames beginning to slowly burn apart the wood the fire had been set upon. " _NO!_ "

Continuing to feel confused, threatened, and scared by its surroundings, the dragon continued to huff defensively. Before any other gnome had a chance to go after it, it quickly breathed in again and shot another fireball out, this time, directly into the crowd of gnomes above the wall.

The gnomes in the way of the fireball proceeded to all jump out at once just as it hit. The impact left a large number of flames that proceeded to start burning into the wood as well. As the gnomes stood back up, they began running and screaming for their lives, as well as most of the other gnomes that sat down within the Gnomoseum as well.

" _DRAGON FRENZY!_ "

The baby dragon continued to breathe in and repeatedly shoot out large balls of fire throughout the arena. Some hit the walls, some hit the ground, some hit the seats above, and some even hit some gnomes themselves. Each time it shot though, another part of the arena got set on fire and started to burn.

Jeff looked on in horror as the dragon continued to fire away. "THAT IDIOT DRAGON IS GONNA BURN DOWN OUR WHOLE GNOMOSEUM! SOMEONE GET IT UNDER CONTROL!"

Just as he spoke, the dragon had already aimed a fireball in his direction, promptly blasting it directly at him. With little time to react, Jeff simply ducked down below one of the seats. However, the spread of the fire was enough to reach him anyway and his hat caught fire, which he noticed just as he stood back up.

" _AHHHH! I'M ON FIRE!_ " he screamed in horror as he began to run around.

At that point, just about every gnome was already on the run, including the ones that had surrounded Mabel, who was now left tied up completely on her own. However, the dragon had previously launched fireballs close to enough to her position where the spreading fires began to grow closer and closer to her.

"Aw, c'mon!" she exclaimed as she looked down at her worsening situation.

More fireballs continued to be shot from the scared dragon, still landing in various places. It had soon fired one incredibly close to Ryland's position, with the flame that it left behind only mere inches away from his board.

However, one look down at the fire and Ryland was able to see that flames were actually occasionally making contact with his ropes. Each time the tip of a flame touched the rope, it sunk in a little burn that cut through slightly. As the wind continued to blow, the flame was found touching the rope multiple times, cutting pretty deeply through.

He knew that as long as the dragon didn't shoot a fireball straight at  _him_ , this would be his way of escaping.

" _C'mon...c'mon!_ " Ryland pleaded as he looked on at the deepening cuts into his ropes made by the flames. To assist the process, he began pulling on the ropes by leaning his body the opposite direction from where flames were cutting.

_SNAP!_

After a moment, the ropes had broken loose and Ryland found himself thrown to the side as he was freed from the board.

"Yes!" he cheered victoriously at his escape, while also rubbing his arms due to the rope burn that came with it.

He quickly drew his focus back to the situation at hand, taking one look at the dragon as it continued to crankily set fire throughout the rest of the arena. Verifying he wasn't within its current line of sight, he looked back over to the section above the walls where Mabel was tied up. The fires that had previously surrounded her had gotten even closer at that point, and all she could do was struggle within her ropes.

"I'M COMING, MABEL!" Ryland shouted as jumped back to his feet and immediately began running over to her.

Ryland quickly rushed over to the wall that her board stood above, jumped up, and grabbed onto the ledge. He pulled himself up onto the small wooden seats, ran up to her and began to untie the knots of the ropes she was tied in, trying to do it fast before the spreading fire reached them.

"So I know sundresses are supposed to be made for warm weather, but this puppy does  _NOT_  respond well to fire at all," Mabel claimed casually as Ryland focused on untying the knots. "Seriously, this dress is starting to feel just as hot as the sun itself. And I have a high tolerance to this kinda stuff! I once wore sweaters for a whole summer!"

"I guess that explains why you've got  _me_  burning up, huh?" Ryland asked with a flirtatious smile as he stopped untying.

Mabel was everything but smitten, though. "Oh, Ryland, sweetie.  _Please_  don't tell me you got flirting advice from my brother..."

"Nope. That just sounded  _a lot_  better in my head," Ryland admitted awkwardly as he resumed untying, finally getting her loose. "Anyway, c'mon! Let's go!"

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her along with him as he ran back down the wooden steps, which began to burn behind them. The two then jumped down into the arena at the same time. As they hit the ground, they looked back up and watched as the fire had spread completely above the wall behind them.

Mabel proceeded to look above at the fire among the seats, realizing they have no way of getting through to get to the side exits. "Now how are we supposed to get out of here now?"

Ryland for a moment before glancing behind them, suddenly having an idea. "Quick! This way!"

He grabbed her wrist yet again and pulled her along with him as he ran in the direction of the dragon. Initially believing they were going to run past it toward the exit, Mabel suddenly became floored once she realized where they were actually running.

"Uh...Ryland? Why are we running  _toward_ the dragon?" she asked, raising a curious, yet nervous eyebrow.

"Because I'm gonna get us outta here!" Ryland replied as he kept running toward it.

"What?!" Mabel asked as Ryland suddenly let go of her.

"Watch!" he assured as he ran up to the dragon on his own, leaving her behind a few yards.

He ran directly behind the baby dragon as it was blasting fireballs in another direction, paying no attention to him or Mabel. Then, without warning, he jumped up and landed right on the dragon's back, placing his hands on its neck in an attempt to ride it.

"TO FREEDOM!" Ryland shouted heroically as he raised a fist in the air.

The baby dragon, however, did not take kindly to Ryland's sudden action and proceeded to roar angrily. It then made a violent jump, throwing Ryland off its back.

"AH!" Ryland yelled as he flew through the air for a brief second before violently hitting the ground. "OW! Well...that didn't work…"

Mabel quickly ran up to his side and tended to him, pulling him back up, and narrowing her eyes. "Ryland, I like you...like...a lot...but that was  _really_ stupid."

The dragon roared unhappily yet again, which grabbed the attention of the two as it turned toward them. With narrowed eyes, it began to slowly march up to them, shaking the ground with each step. Its nostrils were fuming with smoke as it huffed repeatedly at them.

"Yeah, I'm starting to see that now…" Ryland agreed as he looked on nervously.

Neither of them were sure what to do next or how to react as the baby dragon continued to approach them. They could run but they hardly had anywhere to run, especially from a creature capable of flight.

Without any other ideas, Mabel simply decided to stand up right in front of it. She smiled nervously as she slowly began to approach it with her arm outstretched.

"Mabel, what are you doing?" Ryland asked with a look of confusion as he watched her approach the dragon.

"It's okay!" she told the baby dragon in a friendly, yet shaky voice. "There's no need to be scared!"

The dragon appeared to grow slightly confused as it saw her continue to approach it. Still, it huffed aggressively and continued to keep its eyes narrowed at her. But she just continued walking up to it, showing no signs of stopping.

"Those bad gnomes are gone! I won't hurt you!" Mabel continued to tell it.

As she finally reached the scared dragon, she carefully placed a gentle hand right on the top of its large head and began to pet it softly. Maintaining a frozen, uptight posture, the dragon still looked confused and scared, but it also seemed to allow her to pet it.

"Don't worry...you're okay…" she continued to coax it soothingly, trying to maintain as calm of a demeanor as possible in order to assure the dragon could calm down and trust her. "Everything's gonna be fine…"

The longer she pet him, the less uptight the dragon began to appear. It started to lean forward a bit more, which allowed Mabel to more easily pet it. Eventually, it started to calm down to the point where it stopped huffing and smoke stopped expelling from its nostrils. It now appeared to be soothed by her gentle petting, which she and Ryland were able to quickly notice, much to their disbelief.

" _No...way…_ " Ryland said in awe as he watched her gain the trust of a baby fire-breathing-dragon right before his eyes.

"He just wanted someone to comfort him!" Mabel said to Ryland as she proceeded to hug it. "Isn't that right you  _big, hot dragon, you!_ "

"I'm at a loss for words right now," Ryland said as he walked up beside her in front of the dragon. "This is just...amazing."

_HUFF!_

The baby dragon aggressively huffed once at Ryland upon his close approach beside Mabel, which prompted him to flinch back fearfully.

"Hey, hey! It's okay!" Mabel told the dragon quickly as she began giving him comfort pets again. "Trust me. He's alright."

Despite her coaxing, Ryland continued to receive untrusting looks from the dragon. But it remained calm under Mabel's handling.

After a moment though, there was the sound of creaking around the Gnomoseum. As the two looked around, they could see wood caving in and falling apart from the walls as a sign that the entire place was about to collapse from the burning flames.

"Mabel, we need to get out of here," Ryland reminded her, realizing they were running out of time.

Acknowledging this, she turned back to the dragon and gave it a pet on the side of its snout. "I know we just met, but you think you can do us a favor and give us a flight outta here?" she asked as she continued to give it side strokes. " _Pleeeease?_ "

The baby dragon gave a gentle huff as it spread its wings out a bit and proceeded to sit upright, offering for the two to hop on.

Mabel laughed as she approached it and hopped on its back. "Awww! What a sweetie! He already trusts me!" She glanced over to Ryland and gestured for him to hop on behind her. "Now, c'mon! We have our escape!"

"I just can't believe it," Ryland shook his head as he sat down behind her on the dragon. "This thing actually understands what you're saying?"

"Probably not," Mabel admitted with a shrug. "Usually, it's not about what you say to animals. It's about how you say it! At least, in my experience." She then looked forward excitedly as she held her hands on the dragon's neck, holding on. "Now, hang on tight! First time flying a dragon here and I can't guarantee there won't be any accidents!" She patted down on the dragon's neck a few times. "C'mon, boy! Next stop: anywhere where there aren't gnomes!  _YAH!_ "

The baby dragon gave one final huff before leaping forward and spreading it's wingspan all the way out. As soon as it did so, Ryland took immediate safety precaution and held onto Mabel's waist as they took off in the air. Being as young as it was, the dragon wasn't a necessarily skilled flyer and made hard movements as its wings flapped.

Still, Mabel and Ryland managed to hold on long enough before it finally started to smoothen out it's flying. As they soared through the sky, Mabel let out a jubilant laugh as she felt the wind flow through her hair above. The feeling of flying on a dragon was nothing short of joyful for her and she didn't even notice when her matching blue floppy straw hat blew off her head. The rush was too good for her to care though.

Ryland didn't express the same amount of excitement as her, finding the circumstances a bit more terrifying due to how easy it was for him to slip off. However, he couldn't help but smile upon seeing Mabel so enthused and excited. Their date had shifted in a completely different direction once the gnomes showed up, and while things were still far off from what he had initially planned, he liked this better. And when she turned her head to look at him in the eye, he could tell that she did too.

Jeff poked his head out of a nearby stream of water that he had run to in order to put out the fire that covered him before. As he looked up, he spotted the couple flying off on the baby dragon. He narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists angrily.

"CURSE YOU, MABEL PINES!" he shouted at them, though his voice wasn't loud enough for them to possibly notice from so high up.

He sighed and looked down in defeat. At the same time, he looked down at himself and only then realized that the fire had burnt off all of his clothes. With this in mind, he promptly sat back down in the stream, letting the flowing water be his temporary cover.

"Help! Gnome president down!" he aimlessly called out for through the forest. "I'm in a stream and need a new set of clothes here!"

There was no response from any other gnomes that could've been in the area. Jeff continuously looked around, hoping someone would show up to aid him. However, even after a solid minute, there was still no answer to his calls.

"A-Anybody?"

* * *

Back in the observation room, Wendy continued to sit alone on the ground with her back laid against the wall. In her hands, she held an ax. With little pressure, she ran her finger along the cutting edge, staring at it.

"Ugh," she groaned at herself as she placed the ax down beside her. "This is so stupid. What's wrong with me? Why am I so scared? I've faced tons of other crap the same summer I came down here last. So, why does  _this place_  give me the creeps? Why am I so afraid of a monster that just turns into other monsters?"

She picked her ax back up and stared at it again, this time focusing on her glossy reflection within the head of the ax.

"Am I just scared of... _myself?_ " she asked herself as she looked on at her reflection.

It was a ridiculous thing to think that all her fear of the bunker and the Shifter could've accumulated from a brief battle she had with herself when she fought the Shifter last. But as she recalled the circumstances of her life over the past month, the ridiculousness of the idea started to dissipate.

"It has been pretty stressful at home lately," she admitted, thinking over all the pressure that's been put on her as of late with her upcoming move. "And, of course, it's my fault for getting expelled in the first place. Maybe...I'm just worried about messing up again. Maybe the one bad memory of this place is just mixing in with all of the stress. I mean...is this place really as bad as I remember it?"

She stared forward for a moment, thinking over her feelings and fears. The more she thought it over, the more confident she began to get with herself.

"To hell with these so-called fears," she said to herself as she confidently stood up from the floor, pocketing her ax as she began walking across the room over to the decontamination chamber. "This place isn't anything I can't handle. I've gone through the apocalypse, dammit! And I don't get nightmares from that!" She proceeded to pull open the door to the decontamination chamber and step in, shutting the door behind her. "So, if that can't stop me, then neither can a little bit of PTSD! I can do this!"

She proceeded to pull down on the cord that hung above in the chamber, which immediately prompted a shower of water to rain down on her from above. The suddenness caught her by surprise and she shrieked as she held her hands above her head. The water eventually finished washing down on her, giving her a second to catch her breath. A few seconds after, though, she was blasted with hot air from both sides, the intensity blowing off her pine tree cap, as well as almost entirely drying her.

_BEEP!_

A sign that read 'Decontamination Complete' flashed above the next doorway, which promptly opened up. She picked her cap back up from the floor and adjusted it on her head, glancing around outside the doorway as she stepped out into the lab.

"Alright, I forgot how much I hated that," she claimed as she stepped away from the chamber. "On the bright side, as Ford said, the Shapeshifter's gone. So really, one near-death situation aside, what's there to be scared about?"

_BANG! BANG! BANG!_

Wendy's eyes bulged as she was startled by the sudden sounds of metallic banging. She quickly turned her head and looked around the laboratory, trying to piece where the sound was coming from.

_BANG! BANG! BANG!_

" _MM-MMM!_ "

The extra banging allowed her to trace the sound back to a corner of the lab where a metal cabinet stood. Paired with the muffled screams from a familiar voice, she began to grow unnerved and hesitated on whether she should walk over and check it out for herself. Knowing the boys had already been through before her, she questioned whether it was just something normal that McGucket had kept around or if it was something worth being concerned about.

" _MM-MMM! MM-MMMM!_ "

She deduced that someone was definitely inside the cabinet and they sounded like they were calling out for help. What continued to bring her concern was the fact that the voice of the muffled screams began to become even more familiar to her as they repeated. Her curiosity prompted her to start slowing walking over to the cabinet to get a better idea of the supposedly familiar voice to her, while also not jumping to the immediate conclusion of opening it up and potentially freeing something dangerous.

" _MM-MMM! MMMMMMMMMM!_ "

"Dipper?!"

" _MM-MMM! MM-MMM! MM-MMM!_ "

Her eyes widened as she finally came to recognize the muffled screams. Without further hesitation, she ran up to the cabinet quickly and attempted to pull it open. However, she quickly learned it was locked.

Not that it was a problem for her.

"Hang on!" she called out to him as she drew out her ax and slammed the blade right into the middle gap between the doors, cutting straight into the lock embedded inside with a single swing. She pulled the doors open and spotted Dipper at the bottom, all tied up and his mouth taped shut. He looked up at her with pleading, yet thankful eyes. "Oh my God!"

She immediately kneeled down to him, putting her hand on the piece of tape over his mouth and quickly peeling it off.

"Wendy!" he exclaimed gratefully as she found him.

"Dude! What the hell happened?!" she asked, shocked. "Who did this?!"

"I...uh…" he hesitated. "I don't think you wanna know…"

"Just tell me, man!" she demanded, not wanting anything being kept for her at that moment.

Dipper still looked reluctant to say for a moment but knew there wasn't use in starting an argument based on what was at stake. "The Shapeshifter! It cut out the power and caused a blackout, then swooped in, quickly tied me up, and locked me in this closet while it took my place. It's with the others right now!"

The mention of the Shifter's return alone brought a look of disbelief to Wendy's face and he immediately noticed it. She was horrified by this revelation. She knew it. But, she also knew what was at stake with it being with their friends and family. And so as scared as she may have wanted to be, she knew she had to be brave.

Dipper looked at her guiltily. "I know this was the last thing you would've wanted to hear on this whole trip, but…"

"Just forget it, man," she dismissed as she took her ax and carefully, yet speedily sliced through the ropes around his arms and legs, freeing him. She then grabbed his arm and quickly pulled him back up to his feet before beginning to run off toward one of the tunnels. "This isn't about me anymore! We gotta go save the others before it's too late! Come on!"

* * *

McGucket had continued to lead Ford, Derrick, Soos, and Dipper down into the storage area. The five of them continued to stay grouped together, with Ford still readily aiming his wristwatch around behind them. They moved at a steady pace, watching each tunnel they passed as they kept their eyes on the lookout for the Shapeshifter.

"Chemical testing lab up ahead," McGucket pointed out as he walked. "Any sign of the Shifter at all?"

"Nothing particularly notable, but then again, who knows?" Ford asked as he continued to look around. "If it wanted to, it could shift into a pebble. We could step right over him and he could pop out from right beneath us."

"Aw, c'mon, dude! I was already worried enough looking around for extra people!" Soos said, now growing even more anxious by Ford's words. "Now I'm learning this thing can shift into actual objects? My heart ain't gonna be able to take much more of this! I'm freaking out!"

"Calm down, Soos!" Ford assured him. "While my claim is possible, I meant it as a very strong 'if'. I don't believe he would choose that subtle of a form."

"You should consider adding these clarifications to your normal speech," Derrick claimed as he continued keeping his eye out. "I think that'd substantially lower the heart attack risk."

Dipper suddenly stopped walking and looked straight into a tunnel they were about to pass. Noticing something, he pointed into it and turned back to the others as they kept walking. "Guys, wait! The Quantum Destabilizer!"

The other four stopped and turned back to him in surprise; McGucket especially.

"You found it?" Ford asked.

"Yeah!" Dipper nodded as he continued to point into the tunnel. "It's right over here in this dark and scary tunnel!

"Really?" McGucket asked curiously as he stroked his beard. "What's it doing over there in a tunnel? The chemical lab is right ahead."

"Wait a second, guys…" Soos said as he narrowed his eyes at Dipper skeptically. "I've seen this in the movies. What if ' _Dipper_ ' is actually the Shapeshifter? And what if ' _he_ ' is trying to lead ' _us_ ' into ' _his_ ' ' _trap?_ '" he suspected while improperly overusing air quotes.

Dipper glanced around casually. "Well, I mean, the gun is literally right there. I'm not even joking. You can see it from where I'm standing right now."

With that said, the four proceeded to walk back over to him, standing right behind him as they looked into the specified tunnel. And just as he said, they managed to spot the large gun lying against the back wall of the dead-ended tunnel.

"Well, I'll be darned. There it is!" McGucket said, finding himself surprised to actually see the Destabilizer.

"Huh," Soos said, also somewhat surprised. "In that case, I withdraw my accusation. Guess I've been watching too many movies. Sorry 'bout that, dude!"

"No problem...um...bro!" Dipper replied while giving Soos a friendly punch in the arm. "Anyways, we should all go in there and get it. Leaving anyone out here would leave someone open to the Shifter, you know? Same thing in there."

"I suppose you're right," Ford nodded as he and the others began to walk into the tunnel toward the weapon. "Quickly though. Someone grab the weapon so we can keep moving toward the chemical lab. We still need to stock up on weapons so we're more prepared to fight back against the Shifter. If he's here, then it's vital we stop him before we leave today."

Derrick walked up to the weapon and picked it up in his hands, struggling a bit due to the unexpectedly heavy weight of the gun. "Man...so  _this_ is how heavy an  _empty_ multidimensional death-ray is? Yikes. I'd hate to be carrying this if it was actually  _loaded_."

"Maybe I can give you some help, dude," Soos offered as he walked up to him.

"Actually,  _all of you_  are going to need help.  _Against me_ ," Dipper said as his voice suddenly changed into something more deep and menacing as he stood behind the four threateningly, holding a sinister grin.

At that moment, Dipper was no longer Dipper, as he suddenly transformed and shifted into a giant spider-like creature with eight-long legs. Immediately, he turned his head toward the four and began to spit out heavy amounts of webbing from its mouth, blasting everyone one by one.

"AH!" Soos shouted as he was webbed to the wall.

"HEY!" Derrick exclaimed as he was webbed along with the Destabilizer.

"EH!" McGucket shrieked as his frontside got pinned to the wall with webbing.

"NO!" Ford shouted as he had attempted to aim his wristwatch, but was too late to avoid the webbing.

With little time to react, everyone soon found themselves webbed to the walls of the tunnel in different positions and angles.

"What the hell?!" Derrick questioned in horror as attempted to struggle out of the web, but to no avail. "Dipper?!"

"That ain't Dipper! That's the Shapeshifter!" McGucket called out fearfully as his eyes were just barely able to glance at it due to the position of his head.

"Oh no!" Soos exclaimed as he realized that Dipper actually was the Shapeshifter. "My sequel theory was true after all! I shouldn't have let my guard down!"

" _Hahaha!_ " the Shapeshifter cackled evilly as it transformed back from the spider-creature into its normal form. " _Yes! After all this time...after all my planning...I knew it'd lead to capturing the author!_ "

He walked up to Ford, who continued to try and struggle out of the webs. As he approached him, he took one look at his face and then one look at his hands, verifying his six fingers.

" _At long last...I see your face!_ " the Shifter claimed as he stared at Ford. " _And now I remember...the first face I had laid eyes on when I had hatched. A face that I thought I would never see again. A face to be forgotten as a youthful memory. Until now...Stanford Pines..._ "

"It's been awhile,  _Shifty_ ," Ford greeted his old specimen with narrowed eyes. "I believe our last encounter ended with me freezing you after your remorseless attempt to lock up my partner and steal my journal."

" _Yes, and a successful attempt it would have been had your partner kept his pathetic, stammering mouth shut_ ," the Shifter replied as his eyes glanced over at McGucket on the wall.

"P-Pathetic? S-Stammering?!" McGucket stammered in an offended voice that had raised his pitch.

" _Shut up_ ," the Shifter demanded, already beginning to grow annoyed by McGucket. " _Anyhow, as you can see, I'm frozen no more! And it hasn't been the first time either. You think I've dug all these tunnels in four years? Early on during your absence, I've managed to escape from my first freezing. Of course, no form I attained was prepared to break the bedrock barriers you surrounded this place with. Still, as seen today, these tunnels proved to be good spots to set traps!_ "

"Wait a minute...so  _you_  put the Quantum Destabilizer here?" Ford realized, surprised. "But how did you know we were even looking for it?"

" _Four years ago, when McGucket freed me under the impression I was a boy named Dipper, I took it as my chance to make an escape_ ," the Shifter explained. " _However, McGucket's sudden return to the bunker surprised me and piqued my interest. If he were still around, I thought that perhaps, you were too. While not at that moment, I figured eventually. So rather than making my escape, I stayed behind and plotted for our reunion, occasionally following McGucket as he continued to come back again and again, dropping off even more frozen creatures that I soon learned were captured by you_.  _But you rarely came down yourself. I figured I needed a way to lure you back in, so, during one of McGucket's visits, I stole a weapon; a big one too, assuming it would be more important. And important it was. I must've gotten lucky picking the exact device you were searching for. You think I'm as much of a nerd as you are to know what your Quantum Destable-whatever is?_ "

"So you had a chance to escape, but you didn't because you wanted to settle a grudge with Ford?" Soos asked, chuckling. "I'm sorry, dude, but that just sounds way too obsessive."

"Tell me about it," Derrick agreed. "Put me alone in a room with Mabel with the door open and you'd never see  _me_  sticking around."

"And if Shifty stole the Destabilizer from the bunker..." Ford began as he realized something, looking over at McGucket. "Then Fiddleford, you were right all along! You didn't misplace the weapon or forget where it was! It was in the weapon cache! Shifty just took it down here and also made your mind appear forgettable!"

"So...my mind isn't still that bad after all!" McGucket happily realized, only to be hit by the Shifter's former words as he turned back to it. "Hold on a second! Ya mean you've been following me around each time I've been down here? Aw, man! My paranoia of being constantly watched just skyrocketed all the way up to a thousand! Now the nightmares are just gonna get worse! Each and every single-!"

_THWIP!_

At that moment, McGucket's mouth had suddenly been shut by a web, which had come from the spider-like creature that the Shifter had quickly transformed back into. He shifted back to his normal form yet again and looked on at McGucket in annoyance.

" _-mmm-MMM!_ "

" _In the past four years he's been coming down here, I've grown EXTREMELY tired of listening to him_ ," he said as shook his head irritatedly.

"Well, listen to  _me_  now, Shifty," Ford demanded, grabbing the Shifter's attention back. "I froze you because you were too curious. Too  _dangerous_  to be let loose. Yet here you are now, having had a chance to leave for four years. And you've made a  _fatal_  mistake by not taking that chance."

" _Oh, I plan on leaving_ ," the Shifter assured him. " _But let's not play dumb, Ford. Revenge aside, you know the real reason why I haven't left yet…_ " He then held out his open claw to him. " _There's been s_ _omething I've been meaning to get my hands on…_ "

"I think he's talking about the journals, dude," Soos whispered loudly to Ford, unaware how he was essentially pointing out the obvious.

"Well, you're out of luck," Ford told the Shifter smugly. "I've been rid of those journals for the same four years you've hung down here. Talk about irony, huh?"

" _You're bluffing_ ," the Shifter refused to believe as he took a threatening step closer to him.

"Hey, if you don't believe me, you can surely jump into the bottomless pit and see for yourself!" Ford offered. "That is if you're lucky enough to end up wherever  _they_  landed."

" _LIES!_ " the Shifter roared in denial to Ford's claims, suddenly shifting into a large, menacing creature with a big, split-jaw mouth.

" _Uncle Ford?! Where are you?!_ "

" _Yo! Anybody here?!_ "

At that moment, everyone but the Shifter turned their heads to see Dipper and Wendy suddenly run up to the tunnel entrance. They promptly stopped and gasped as they noticed everyone hung from the walls in thick spider webs.

"Dipper!" Ford shouted.

"Wendy!" Soos shouted gladly as he looked over at them. "You dudes are okay!"

"Guys!" Wendy shouted, growing concerned as she spotted them all hanging from the walls. "What happened here?"

At that moment, the Shifter turned it's head and looked over at the two in its current form. The two finally laid their eyes upon it and noticed it. Before they had a chance to process it, the creature opened its split-jaw mouth and roared at them, unveiling it's hundreds of razor-sharp teeth menacingly.

"AHHHHHHHH!" Dipper and Wendy screamed in horror at the terrifying form.

* * *

"AHHHHHHHH!" Mabel and Ryland screamed as they began descending to the ground on the baby dragon.

Having flown a fair enough distance away from the gnomes at that point, Mabel had figured it was a good time to land somewhere. Considering how easy it was taking off, she figured landing couldn't be any harder.

That was poor judgment on her part.

After commanding it to land, the baby dragon's lack of landing experience kicked in and it proceeded to go for a hard landing. Rather than descending at a smooth and steady pace, it basically dropped down at a steep angle.

The two held on for their lives as their smooth flying suddenly turned into a terrifying sky fall. Even Mabel was holding onto the dragon's neck so tightly that she almost drew her nails into its skin. But because she put her care for animals before her own safety, she resisted the urge.

As the baby dragon touched the ground, the heavy impact caused it to bounce up in an attempt to regain control of its flight. The sudden bounce sent Mabel and Ryland flying off its back, soaring through the air for a brief moment before tumbling violently against the forest ground. Eventually, they stopped rolling and they both lay flat on the ground in different positions.

"Ow…" Mabel groaned in agony as she laid the side of her face pressed against the ground.

After a moment, she slowly sat back up, placing a hand on the side of her head in pain. She looked down at her arms and legs, which were covered in bruises and scratches from the fall. She could feel similar pains from such throughout the rest of her body too.

She could complain all day about the pain, but her concern was suddenly drawn back to Ryland when she noticed him still lying on the ground. Unsure how bad his injuries might have compared to hers, she quickly jumped back to her feet and ran over to him worriedly.

"Oh my gosh! Ryland! Are you okay?!" she asked as she kneeled down next to him, placing her hands on his arm and shaking him to check to see if he was conscious at the very least.

"Ugh…" he groaned as he slowly sat up, rubbing the back of his neck painfully. "I'm okay...mostly..."

"Sorry about the landing," she apologized while awkwardly gripping her arm. "I can't say I've ever landed a baby dragon before..."

"You're good. Don't worry," he assured her. "Trust me. I've been in far worse bike accidents. I'm up to the point where I can't even tell when I'm bleeding anymore." He sat silently for a minute, thinking. " _Am I_  bleeding?"

"You got some scratches, but nothing that makes you any less cute," she cleverly replied.

"That's reassuring," he replied with a flattered smile.

Suddenly, there was a faint cry from the baby dragon that grabbed their attention. As they looked up, they saw the dragon slowly walking toward them. It didn't appear like it was hurt or angry and simply approached them with ease. It then hung out its wingspan as it walked up to Mabel and lowered its head for her.

"Well, looks like  _someone's_ not tired of Mabel!" she said with a tender smile as she wrapped her arms around the dragon's head and began petting it again. " _Eeee!_  So adorable you are!" She stroked her hand over the dragon's nostrils, which actually turned out to be much hotter than the rest of the dragon's face, prompting her to quickly retract her hand as she received a slight burn. "Wowie, that nose can burn!"

"So, now what? Is he, like, yours now?" Ryland asked her, wondering what she plans to do with the dragon now.

"That'd be so cool, wouldn't it?" she claimed as she began to think about it. "I mean, imagine me going back home to Piedmont with a fire-breathing dragon at the end of the summer! People at school will think twice before calling my clothing designs too silly! I can  _burn_ all of my enemies!"

Ryland grew uncomfortable quick. "Uh...you okay there?"

She laughed as she turned back to him. "Don't worry. I'm just joking around."

"Oh.  _Phew_ ," Ryland said, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Well, sort of…" she added as she continued petting the dragon, her words prompting Ryland's eyes to bulge uneasily. "Anyway, as much as I'd love to add a dragon to my army, it's not gonna happen. I still have Waddles and I'm getting an octopus from another dimension soon anyway. Best not to push my luck."

"Didn't the gnomes say they had his mom too?" Ryland remembered.

"Yeah," Mabel said, narrowing her eyes at the thought of the gnomes handling the momma dragon. "And I'd be just as bad as those gnomes if I kept him from his mother…"

"To be fair, you haven't kidnapped anyone," Ryland justified. "At least, not to  _my_  knowledge…"

"True," she nodded before kneeling down and giving the dragon one final goodbye hug. "Goodbye, Firefly. Thank you for trusting me. Maybe someday, we'll meet again."

"Firefly?" Ryland asked.

"Just a name I came up with for him in the middle of our flight," Mabel briefly explained.

Ryland nodded at her response with a smile. "I like it."

Mabel smiled back at him before pulling away from her hug with Firefly. She stood back up and stepped away to give him some space. "Now, go! Be free! Find your mother!"

Firefly hesitated for a moment, as he still stood in place and stared up at her. But still, she continued making gestures for him to go off.

"Go on!" she told it again. "She's out there! Find her! Save her from the gnomes! Be with her again!"

It still took a good minute of standing in place before Firefly finally started to comprehend and do as told. He huffed gratefully once more before turning around and spreading his wingspan. He ran forward a bit before leaping into the air, flapping his wings as he took off again. Similar to his earlier takeoff from the Gnomoseum, his flight pattern was uneven and a bit violent at first. But as he got higher, he let his wings glide more through the air, the flapping only aiding in keeping the flight even and smooth.

Mabel felt a little bit emotional watching him fly off. Still, she smiled and was glad to see it going off on its own and hopefully, to go rescue his mother from the gnome.

"Bye, Firefly!" she waved at him with misty eyes. "Burn a few gnomes for me! Only if you have to, that is!"

Soon, he flew out of their sight, disappearing somewhere over the forest. Mabel sighed, feeling her heart going through the usual waves of loss when saying farewell to a wild animal. Of course, she knew it'd pass, and just felt grateful for the brief moment she got to spend with him.

"Wow," Ryland said as he continued to stare up at the sky after watching Firefly take off. "What a day, huh?"

"Tell me about it," Mabel agreed. "I mean, it's not every first date where you get to tame and fly a baby fire-breathing dragon." She then thought it over, tapping her chin with her finger. "Actually, that sounds like the kind of thing Pacifica would do…except maybe with a Stallion..."

"It's just so crazy," Ryland told her. "Don't you remember when you made up that story about knowing how to tame fire-breathing dragons that set gnomes on fire around the time we first met?"

Mabel's face reddened from guilty embarrassment upon being reminded of that time. "Yep...I sure do…remember that..."

"Hey, I'm not bringing it up to bash on you," Ryland assured her as he gave her a nudge in the arm. "I'm just saying that it's crazy how it actually kind of ended up happening after all."

"Yeah," Mabel agreed as she walked over to a large stump and sat down on it. "Crazy how one day, you make a fool out of yourself for lying to a boy you like, and only a few weeks later, that same lie makes you look like some sorta psychic to him when it actually happens."

"So, even  _then_ , you liked me?" Ryland curiously asked as he sat down right beside her on the same stump.

"I've kind of always liked you," Mabel admitted, her face reddening a bit. "Only difference between now and then is that I like you  _a little_  more now."

"Quite a difference," Ryland scoffed with a smile.

"Hey, at least you've always had it going for you," she claimed. "Meanwhile, I'm sure I've had multiple moments since we've met where you probably thought I wasn't that great."

"What? Are you kidding?" Ryland questioned with a chuckle. "I've pretty much always liked you too."

"Really?"

"Kind of, yeah," he nodded as he awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. "I mean, from day one, you've always come off as likable to me."

"Ohhh,  _stop it_ ," she dismissed blushingly.

"I'm serious," he assured her. "I mean, you're cool, funny, creative, energetic...You dress amazingly all the time...you're confident…"

"Pfft... _confident…_ " she chuckled at the used term. "I don't know where you got  _that_ from. Before I told you my feelings, I've always been, like, a total  _mess_ around you."

"Well, I never noticed," he admitted. "But, all I'm trying to say is you're super likable. I mean, only you can keep on attracting gnomes four years later and tame a dragon as easily as you do."

"What can I say? I guess I'm just... _irresistiblllle_ ," she joked as she lightly flailed her arms around in front of her before the two burst out laughing together in amusement.

Once they settled down, Mabel set her hand back down on the stump. Without even looking, Ryland then found his hand laying on top of her's. They both looked down at their hands and then back up at one another in slight surprise. With neither of them making an effort to retract their hands back, their faces both flushed red as they began warmly smiling at one another.

"Yeah," Ryland said as his eyes awkwardly glanced to the side for a moment before looking back at her. "Guess you are."

Mabel wasn't sure her smile could get any wider or if her face could get any redder. But it felt like they both could the longer he had his hand on top of her's as she looked into his green eyes. The same way he felt about her as he watched her curly, brown hair blow around in the light summer breeze, the sunlight shining brightly upon her already bright expression.

It was clear that the moment had naturally presented itself, and the two promptly shut their eyes as they leaned for each other's lips. As soon as they touched, it felt as though everything that had built up between them since they met had finally been released. Like the weight they had been carrying for so long had finally been let go.

Sure, it wasn't either of their first kisses, but it was  _their_ first kiss. And finally sharing it after the bond they've managed to develop in the few weeks they've spent together just felt like an amazing payoff. Especially for Mabel, who was just glad to have finally found a great guy and score a relationship that wasn't rushed into from the start.

 _This_ was the epic summer romance that she had been dreaming of.

" _AHHHHHHHH!_ "

Mabel's eyes opened wide as she caught the sound of the sudden distant screams. Normally, she'd just find something like that to be a little off-putting during such an intimate moment, but something about these combined screams really grabbed her attention and unsettled her. So much to the point that she pulled away from her kiss with Ryland just so she could direct all her focus to it.

Ryland opened his eyes again as he realized that she pulled away. Looking at the concerned expression that now laid upon her face, he grew a little uneasy.

"Did I...uh...do something wrong?" he asked awkwardly. "Does my breath still smell like soufflé?" He proceeded to breathe out onto his hand and smell his breath. While he didn't think it was all that bad, he deduced it as the problem anyway and began frantically digging into his pocket. "Dammit! I thought two mints would've been enough!"

" _Shhh!_ " Mabel shushed him while holding a finger to her mouth.

Ryland shut his mouth for a good moment. As nothing but silence prospered for a solid moment, he began to look around in confusion.

"What hap-"

" _AHHHHHHHHHH!_ "

"You hear that?" Mabel asked him, her eyes bulging anxiously.

"It sounds like people screaming…" he realized.

"I know those terrified screams!" Mabel shouted as she suddenly stood up from the stump in panic. "That's my brother and Wendy!"

"Well, where are they coming from?" Ryland asked as he stood up as well, searching around for where the screams could've come from.

"This way!" Mabel claimed as she tracked the direction of the screams in the forest and began running toward them with Ryland following right behind her.

They didn't run very far, as Mabel found herself stopping right in front of a sunken tree in a familiar part of the woods. As she looked down into the hole surrounding the tree, she noticed the flight of steps that led to the bottom of the hole and to the entry point of the underground bunker. She realized how convenient it was that they had managed to land the dragon close enough for them to hear it.

Ryland stepped up beside her and looked down into the hole. "Trees with secret doors in them? Wow, this town really  _does_ have it all."

"Dipper said he was going on a mission down here with our friends and Grunkle!" Mabel explained to him.

" _AHHHHHHHH!_ " the screams of Dipper and Wendy yet again faintly echoed from the bunker below.

"Well,  _clearly_ , they're in trouble!" Ryland concluded before rushing down the stairs, descending into the bunker below. "C'mon! Let's give them a hand!" he exclaimed, just as Mabel started following down behind him.

* * *

"AHHHHHHHH!"

As Dipper and Wendy screamed, the Shifter reverted back to its normal form, which sent an even bigger chill down their spine than did the form it took before.

"The Shapeshifter!" Wendy exclaimed fearfully as it revealed itself.

"Oh no! We were too late to warn them about it!" Dipper realized as he looked back up everyone hanging from giant spider webs.

" _You..._ " the Shifter said as it pointed over at the two, recognizing them. " _I remember you two! Of course, I was one of you a moment ago. How time has passed. Your older form isn't as useless your younger one. Not that that's saying much..._ "

"Don't let him get to you, Dipper!" Ford called out to him. "You have improved immensely over four years! Don't let him tell you otherwise!"

" _You know, Ford, I've noticed that you seem rather defensive of this boy who has searched for you years ago. And you must have enough trust in him to bring him along_ ," the Shifter realized aloud as he turned to him. " _Is there a correlation that I'm missing here?_ "

"Uh, duh…" Soos chimed in. "The dude's name is Stanford  _Pines_. Dipper's name is Dipper  _Pines_. Is it not crystal clear at this point? I mean, he doesn't call him 'Great Uncle Ford' for nothing."

"SOOS!" Dipper and Ford called out irritatedly as he revealed this information.

"Soos, why would you tell him that?!" Wendy asked, also frustrated by Soos's absent-minded contribution.

"Sorry, dude. I just thought it was obvious," Soos apologized, realizing his mistake.

" _A great uncle, huh?_ " the Shifter questioned before turning back to Dipper, beginning to approach him. " _Well, perhaps, if you don't have the journals, Ford, then you must've trusted them in the hands of your nephew_."

"The journals?" Dipper questioned as he began slowly backing up.

"Dude, the journals have been gone for, like, years already!" Wendy stated as she backed up along with him.

"Yeah! We threw them out into the bottomless pit!" Dipper supported.

" _Lies! The same lies that rolled off of Ford's tongue!_ " the Shifter continued to deny. " _Why should I believe that one would put so much time and effort into three intricately designed books only to throw them all away?_ "

"They were problematic and brought more misfortune to this family than benefit!" Ford intervened as he continued trying to struggle his way out of the webs.

" _Well, your family is about to have even more misfortune in a second if Dipper doesn't hand those journals over!_ " the Shifter responded as he continued walking up to Dipper threateningly.

"You think he's lying?!" Wendy asked, continuing to defend Dipper.

"I'm telling you! The journals are gone! You hear me?!  _Gone_ ," Dipper continued to reiterate. "And unless you jump into the bottomless pit yourself, then the chances of you ever getting one of your hands on them again are zero to none!"

Suddenly, as he continued walking backward, Dipper tripped on a wire that he didn't notice and fell backward. As he wore his backpack, he promptly fell on top of it, the pressure pushing his journal right from the bag and out into the open, flipped to a page with an illustrated creature on it. The Shifter's eyes immediately darted over to it and bulged in surprise.

"Oh no!" Ford said under his breath as he saw Dipper's journal slip out.

"Uh oh…" Dipper said to himself nervously, realizing the trouble he was about to get himself into.

" _What's this?_ " it asked as he spotted it. " _Another journal? With NEW forms?!_ "

"No! It's not!" Dipper tried to tell it as he crawled backward and grabbed his journal from the ground, closing it before standing back up. "It's just a book of mine! It's not what you're looking for!"

" _What I'm looking for is another index of transformations to add to my collection!_ " the Shifter told it. " _And if you claim that Ford's journals are gone, then that blue journal will fill the same purpose just nicely! So if you're wise, then you'll HAND IT OVER!_ "

"Dipper!" Ford called out to him from the tunnel. "RUN!"

"BOOK IT, MAN!" Wendy shouted in agreement as she pushed Dipper back, forcing him to get a move on as they started running back to the lab.

" _COME BACK HERE!_ " the Shifter commanded angrily before shifting into a large, brown rolly polly monster. It let out a loud, ear-piercing shriek before rolling up into a ball and chasing after them through the tunnels.

"Aw man!" Derrick exclaimed worriedly.

" _MMM-MMMMMM!_ " McGucket tried to scream through the web around his mouth.

"What do we do now?" Soos asked anxiously as he turned toward the others. "We need to go help them!"

"Yeah, we need to get out of these damn webs!" Derrick shouted as he continued to try and struggle out of them, but to no avail.

"I'm already on it," Ford said as he looked over at the webbed-up wrist where Meridian lay beneath. "Meridian: activate laser function at intensity - twenty-five."

_Beep-beep._

Suddenly, beneath the webbing, a red light glowed indicating the activation of Ford's wristwatch laser going off. There was a buzzing noise that paired along with it, which seemed to indicate the laser was cutting through the webbing, albeit at a slow pace.

"This might take a while," Ford admitted, his expression becoming annoyed as he gave into the waiting process.

* * *

"This way, dude!" Wendy called out behind her to Dipper as they ran through the lab.

Having a solid lead on the Shifter, there were many different routes they could have gone. The tunnels or somewhere else next to the lab equipment were viable options. But with most of their team left behind and tangled up in webs, there was only so much that running could do for the two. They needed to take the time to devise a plan and they weren't going to do that if they continued running in circles.

So to buy them some time, Wendy pointed back toward the observation deck. With the door back into the decontamination chamber left open, the two quickly ran inside and pushed the door back onto the deck itself open. They then ran back inside and promptly closed the door again behind them. As an extra precaution, Wendy placed her hands on the door's valve and locked it shut before exhaustedly dropping to the ground with Dipper.

"You good, man?" Wendy asked Dipper through her panting.

"Yeah, yeah," Dipper nodded as he sat back up tiredly. "Can guarantee my legs are going to be destroyed tomorrow though."

Suddenly, they heard a belligerent roaring coming from back in the lab. They glanced at one another fearfully before deciding to crawl back over to the dashboard of buttons and computer monitors. They got on their knees and looked over at one of the screens displaying live camera footage of the lab activity.

In the monitor, they soon saw the Shapeshifter rolling up from its rolly polly form into the middle of the lab. It then shifted straight into a Gremloblin form and began aggressively flipping over equipment and smashing monitors. It continued to glance around the room, keeping an eye out for Dipper and Wendy, but grew frustrated by his lack of knowledge of their location and began roaring angrily.

" _SHOW YOURSELVES!_ " it shouted as it marched offscreen to continue its search.

Dipper and Wendy looked on at the screen in horror, but also gained a slight sense of relief at the fact that they had thrown the Shifter off their trail.

For now, at least.

"Looks like we're safe for a bit," Wendy claimed as she sat back down on the floor, leaning her back against the dashboard as she tried to think for a moment. "I was  _really_ hoping I wouldn't have to see that thing again."

"UGH! This is all my fault!" Dipper exclaimed as he pulled down on the ears of his hat guiltily.

"Woah, what?" Wendy asked, wondering what he was talking about. "What do you mean?"

"I shouldn't have asked you to come along for this," he replied as he slumped back against the dashboard. "This was just supposed to be a harmless adventure, but instead, I dragged you into a nightmare that almost got you killed and put us against the Shapeshifter yet again. Rather than just respecting your decision not to come, I pushed you closer to your fears." He sighed as he rested his head on top of his knees. "I know you're probably under enough stress as it is with your move coming up. But I just wanted us to have a chance to hang out a bit more before then. I didn't mean to stress you out even more by asking you to come along."

Wendy looked at him for a moment, processing his remorseful words. But then, she smiled gratefully as she put a hand on his shoulder, prompting him to look back up at her.

"Hey, man, it's okay," she said forgivingly. "I mean, at no point so far today have I come close to pinning any of this stuff on you. At the same time, you need to keep in mind that I came along at my own will. If anything happened to me, the only person I have to blame is myself. Not the messenger. And what have I told you before? If I didn't think I could handle any of this, I would've left already."

"But, the Shapeshifter…" he reminded her. "I thought you were afraid of it."

"Yeah, sure. That thing kinda freaks me out," she admitted. "But you know what freaks me out even more? Knowing that the people I care about are in danger. And not to sound self-conceited or anything, but from what we've seen today, if I hadn't been here, who exactly would've been around to free you from a cabinet or even help go after your great uncle and the others?"

"That's true," he admitted as he rubbed his arm.

"You see?" she asked. "And as long as the Shapeshifter is free and everyone else is in trouble, I'm still not going anywhere. Regardless of how terrifying it might be, we came into this bunker together. And I'll be damned if we don't come out together with that gun to help Stan." She then offered her fist out to him. "Understood?"

Dipper thought for a second but then smiled as he bumped her fist back with his. "Understood."

" _Awww, now, isn't that sweet?_ "

"AHHHH!" Dipper and Wendy screamed fearfully as they were startled by the sudden voice.

"Guys! Calm down! It's us!" Mabel claimed as she and Ryland stood right before them.

"Mabel?!" Dipper named in surprise.

"Ryland?!" Wendy named as well.

"What are  _you two_  doing here?" Dipper asked, incredibly confused by their presence. "I thought you two were supposed to be on a date?"

"Well...it  _kind of_  stopped being a date over an hour ago…" Mabel admitted as she rubbed the back of her neck and looked over at Ryland, the incident with the gnomes coming to both of their minds. "Anyway, we heard your screams and came down to rescue you guys!"

"Alright, I have a lot of questions right now, but I think my biggest one right now would be: how the  _hell_ did you guys get past the security room?" Dipper asked as he noticed the open door behind them that came from the security room.

"I mean, the door was open, so we just walked right across," Ryland answered.

"... _without_  activating a single trigger…?" Dipper asked, eye twitching in shock by this revelation.

"Damn, Ford's right," Wendy realized as she glanced at Dipper. "That  _is_ a terrible change for a  _security_ room."

_BANG!_

The observation deck shook violently as a large bang had suddenly occurred somewhere within the lab. The four glanced around at one another fearfully as they lost balance for a brief moment.

" _REVEAL YOURSELVES AT ONCE, SINGLE-FORMED WEAKLINGS!_ " shouted the angry voice of the Shapeshifter as it continued searching for them.

"Single-formed?" Mabel asked, eyes displaying concern. "Oh no...is that…?"

"...the Shapeshifter? Yes, it is," Dipper confirmed as he looked back at the live lab footage being displayed on the screen. "And he's  _not_ happy."

"I thought we froze him! How'd he get out?" Mabel asked as she walked up beside him and looked over at the monitor.

"Quick question: who is 'he?'" Ryland asked, having absolutely no grasp on who or what the Shapeshifter is.

"Look, now's not really the time to be going into details," Wendy stated bluntly. "All you really need to know is that he's loose and we need to figure out a way to stop him."

"Yeah, but, who  _is_ he?" Ryland repeated.

"Ford, Soos, McGucket, and Derrick already got trapped by him," Dipper added, speaking completely over Ryland's question. "So, it's all up to us now."

"How exactly are we gonna beat him, then?" Mabel asked, trying to think it over.

"I guess the only way is by getting him back inside one of those freezing tubes," Wendy suggested.

"Right," Dipper agreed as he glanced back at the screen displaying the live feed of the cooling system. "But how exactly are we going to…?  _OH NO!_ "

Realizing his panic, the other three promptly looked over at the screen displaying the cooling system feed. Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy looked on in shock as they spotted the Shapeshifter in a large rock monster form smashing and destroying each empty cooling system tube.

" _I know you kids think you're clever!_ " it shouted out aimlessly as he punched through another tube. " _But your old tricks won't work again! You'll have to try harder than a little refrigeration!_ "

"Well...crap…" Wendy said, feeling a sense of hopelessness as she watched the Shifter destroy the final empty cooling system tube.

"What do we do now?" Mabel asked, growing somewhat panicked. "Those tubes were our only way to freeze him! It's not like we can rewire the system and freeze him in a pool of water!"

Dipper's eyes bulged as she said this and was suddenly reminded of the new adjustments to the system that McGucket had made. Remembering what he said about an emergency procedure that can use water for freezing instead of nitrogen, he realized that Mabel's idea was actually plausible.

"Actually, maybe we  _can!_ " he claimed as he pressed a button on the dashboard to switch between the various live camera feeds.

Eventually, he landed on the feed of a camera pointed toward an outer section not too far beyond the cooling system. There was a steep slope that led to a valve that was surrounded by a pool of water. It only looked moderately deep, but the pit was fairly wide, which seemed to make up for the depth.

"I think I have an idea," Dipper claimed as he looked on at the feed of the pit. "Of course, it's gonna require all of us."

"Your sis is here now, bro-bro," Mabel said as she lightly punched him in the arm. "And she's ready for anything!"

"Yeah, dude!" Wendy said with a confident smile. "Pitch us the plan!"

"I'm down to help too, but just for the record, I still have, like, no idea who this guy is nor do I really know what's happening right now," Ryland admitted.

"Don't worry," Dipper assured him. "You're about to find out."

* * *

Outside, the Shifter continued searching around the laboratory for Dipper and Wendy. It inspected every single area and destroyed every single piece of equipment in its way as it searched. But still, it continued to find nothing. And the longer it searched, the angrier and more impatient it got.

" _If you wish to make your death quick and painless, you will hand me your journal now, Dipper!_ " the Shifter announced. " _But, should you make me wait any longer, I'll enjoy tearing you limb for limb; cataloging each and every single piece of your human flesh as a transformation to show to your uncle!_ "

"My, oh, my!" Dipper said as he stepped out into the open with his journal in hand, pretending to sound intrigued as he read through. "I gotta hand it to myself! I did a  _great job_  at drawing  _ALL THESE MONSTERS!_  I can't believe I actually managed to draw  _SO MANY!_ "

At the brink of its anger, the Shapeshifter immediately changed into a large monster with multiple legs and multiple eyes and let out a vicious, deafening screech, prompting Dipper to even cover his ears up.

" _GIVE ME THAT JOURNAL, BOY!_ " the Shifter demanded.

Having obtained the Shifter's attention, Dipper spoke no more. He tucked his journal under his arm and made a run for it. The Shifter continued to chase him within the menacing form, his speed gaining on him. Dipper glanced behind his back once to get an idea on the distance between him and the Shifter. Realizing that the Shifter was gaining, he pushed himself to run even faster.

Eventually, Dipper reached the top of the slope leading down into the pit of water next to the valve. He glanced back at the Shifter once more before jumping down and sliding his feet against the slope while using his hand to help slow him down. All the Shifter managed to see was him jumping down the slope.

Mabel and Ryland sat hidden to the sides near the edge of the slope, poking their heads out the slightest just to get an idea of where the Shifter was. As it neared the edge, the two prepared themselves to flank.

"NOW!" Mabel called out.

The two proceeded to leap forward in each others direction, hitting the ground in front of one another at the very edge of the slope. The Shifter had reached the edge at the exact same moment and managed to trip over the teens as they intercepted his path. The trip resulted in the Shifter flipping as it fell down the slope, violently splashing into the water below.

Dipper, on the other hand, had managed to stop himself from sliding all the way down the slope. Instead, he stood carefully balanced in the middle of it, watching the Shifter in the water from above.

"Yes!" Dipper exclaimed victoriously as he looked back up at Mabel and Ryland. "Nice going, guys!"

The Shifter switched back into its normal form as it stood back up, now drenched from head to toe in water. " _Why are you celebrating? You think water is going to stop me? Please. You really DON'T know what you're up against._ "

"Actually, the water's not to stop you," Dipper smugly claimed as he leaned over to the side and patted down on a wire running down into the water from the top of the slope. "It's actually so the  _improved_ cooling system has another liquid vessel to run through to begin its freezing process."

" _What?!_ " the Shifter asked in surprise.

_BEEP!_

At that moment, Wendy had pressed a red button on the observation deck to start the freezing process of the cooling system. She then sat back with a smug look on her face as she watched process take place over the live feed on the monitor.

With the system activated, a blue substance began running through the wire down the slope and into the pit of water. With a second wire running into the water from the opposite end of the slope, the blue substance was spreading throughout the water at a fast rate.

" _What's happening?!_ " the Shifter asked as it looked around at the water, beginning to feel an intensifying cold that was beginning to make its movements slower.

"What does it look like, genius? You're freezing!" Mabel pointed out from above. "With a hundred-percent more water than last time!"

"The process is gonna continue spreading to whatever water it can find," Dipper explained. "And considering your entire body was submerged just a second ago…"

Just as he spoke, the freezing water began to spread upwards little by little from the Shifter's waist. Each second, it began growing colder and slower as the water started to turn to ice.

" _NOOOOO!_ " the Shifter shouted lastly.

It was soon cut off as its face had suddenly frozen. At that moment, the Shapeshifter had been frozen from head-to-toe, with its lower half being submerged below in the frozen water and its upper half sticking out from above. Everyone else let out a sigh of relief as they had defeated it once again.

" _WOO-HOO-HOOOO!_ " Wendy shouted ecstatically as she made her way over all the way from the observation deck. "We did it!"

"Yeah, we did!" Dipper shouted happily as he slid the rest of the way down the slope. He stood up on the ice and looked on at the frozen Shifter before turning back up to everyone else. "Woo! Nice work, everyone!"

"Thanks!" Ryland nodded. "I still had no idea what was happening, but at least I contributed!"

"Don't worry! You did great!" Mabel told him as she wrapped her arms around him affectionately, which he returned.

"Alright, this got sappy quick," Dipper said in slight disgust as he immediately turned away from the two.

"Start getting used to it, nerd," Mabel told him as she pulled Ryland even closer out of spite.

"God, I'm just glad we actually stopped that thing," Wendy stated as she looked back down at the frozen Shifter.

"I don't know about you guys though, but did anyone else feel like that was a bit too easy?" Ryland asked as he glanced back and forth between everyone. "Like, the way you guys were talking about him before back there, I figured he'd be much more of a fight. But here, we took him out pretty easily."

"To be fair, Mabel and I were twelve last time we fought it and Wendy was fifteen," Dipper claimed as he thought over it. "With that former experience in mind, maybe we were just more prepared to take this thing on a second time." A sudden thought entered his mind as he looked back at the Shifter. "Oh my God, Ford is going to be so proud when he finds out that we stopped the Shifter on our own again!"

"Yeah, we should probably go back and free him and the rest of the guys, shouldn't we?" Wendy asked.

"Do we have to get Derrick back too?" Mabel asked, rolling her eyes at the thought of him.

" _Yes_ , we have to. That's not even a question," Dipper replied as he crossed his arms. "Don't start with that now."

_CRACK!_

Everyone's attention was then alerted toward a sudden cracking sound. As they glanced around for a moment, their eyes eventually glanced back down at the frozen Shifter. They soon noticed a number of various cracks expanding among its frozen upper half.

" _I...will...be….FREE!_ "

At that moment, the Shifter bust through its frozen stasis, freeing the entire upper half of its body. Dipper, being the closest, was blasted by the various ice shards that spiked out as the Shifter burst free. Though he managed to avoid most of them, he still received various scratches amongst his exposed skin.

While the Shifter had its upper body freed, its lower body remained underneath the ice. It didn't hinder its ability to switch forms, however, and it proceeded to shift into its large rock monster form, nearly tripling its size. With its enlarged form, it managed to easily pull itself out from the rest of the ice, stomping its feet down to smash any shards that still remained attached.

Completely freed, its attention turned back to Dipper, Mabel, Ryland, and Wendy, who all stared at it in horror. Angered by their attempt to freeze it, it let out a loud, intimidating roar, which prompted everyone to take a few steps back in fear, with Mabel even grabbing onto Ryland's arm.

" _Yeeeaaah_... _figured_  that was too easy…" Ryland stated nervously as he stared up at the Shifter.

* * *

"Dammit!" Ford exclaimed annoyedly as he looked on at his wristwatch, which still lay underneath the thick webbing, the laser still running and cutting through the webs. "Why is this taking so long?"

"Didn't you set that thing to a low intensity or something?" Derrick asked as he watched Ford grow frustrated.

"Yes, but if I set it any higher, I'll start cooking my hand under here," Ford replied as he continued to watch the red glow of the laser emitted from under the webs.

"Sounds like a small price to pay for freedom," Derrick claimed. "Set it to a hundred and let it blast for a few seconds. You'll have to deal with a second-degree burn for a few days, but you'll be able to make work with that watch now so we can go and help."

"Son, with the amount of power I've installed into this watch, if I set this laser to hundred, I'll be dealing with a lost hand. Not a second-degree-burn," Ford corrected, giving Derrick a strange look.

Derrick thought for a moment. "You're the uncle who's been through dimensions and stuff, right? I'm sure you've been somewhere where you can get a new six-fingered-hand or-"

_SNAP!_

" _...AH!_ "

At that moment, Derrick's webs had suddenly snapped loose, resulting in him falling to the ground, much to the surprise of Ford, Soos, and McGucket. He remained surprised as well and looked around in confusion.

"Woah! Derrick, dude! You're free!" Soos addressed.

"But...how? I wasn't even moving," Derrick questioned.

Ford looked down at the snapped webbing and noticed the Quantum Destabilizer laying on top of most of the web that had come off. "Perhaps, your weight combined with that of the Quantum Destabilizer was enough to weaken the web with all the pressure you both exerted due to the force of gravity."

"But if it was the weight, then how is Soos still hanging?" Derrick asked before his eyes glanced over at the man himself. "No offense, dude. It's a genuine question."

"No worries, dawg," Soos assured him with a smile. "Heck, I was wondering that myself."

"Whatever might've caused it, all that matters is you're free now," Ford settled on. "Now come and free us too."

"Alright, but for the record, I don't know any of you people well enough for this not to be weird for me," Derrick claimed as he placed his hands on Ford's webbing and began pulling on it.

"Yeesh, dude. It only gets uncomfortable when you say things like that," Soos said as he gave Derrick an odd look.

" _Mmmm-mmmmmm. Mm-mm-mm-mmmmm_ ," McGucket muffled through his webs in agreement.

"Heh! See? Even the old dude agrees!" Soos chuckled.

" _AHHHH!_ " screamed Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, and Ryland from the tunnels.

"Dude, maybe I'm going crazy, but I think I just heard Mabel and Ryland over there too!" Soos pointed out, eyes looking somewhat panicked.

"What?!" Ford exclaimed fearfully at the idea that his great-niece had also involved herself in the dangerous matters. "Derrick, hurry! The others are in trouble!"

"I'm trying!" he assured him as he kept pulling on the webs to no success. "These webs are so damn thick! What kind of spider makes webs so strong?"

"In that case, forget about us!" Ford told him. "Go and help the others yourself!"

"What? How am I supposed to help?" Derrick questioned. "I'm the only one in this room who's never even faced that thing before!"

"That doesn't mean anything!" Ford assured. "Trust me! Despite the many forms it can take, they all retain one weakness of his! And that's his impatience!"

"Impatience?" Derrick asked, confused. "What does that mean? I have to annoy it to death?"

"You'll understand what I mean! Now go!" Ford ordered.

Derrick looked hesitant for a moment, but then he nodded at his request. He then turned around and made a run for the tunnels to rescue his friends, leaving the others behind to dangle from the webs.

* * *

"Guys, run!" Dipper shouted to the others up above as he tried to run toward one of the other tunnels out of the pit.

" _Oh no, you don't!_ " the Shapeshifter shouted as it swapped from its rock monster form into its spider form. It quickly jumped on to the wall and rapidly shot an abundance of webs at the four. The long webs shot out and stuck to the backs of Dipper, Mabel, and Ryland as they attempted to run.

"NO!" Dipper exclaimed as he was pulled back by the Shifter.

"AHH!" Mabel screamed.

"HEY!" Ryland shouted.

As the three were pulled back, the Shifter had shot another web directly at Wendy as she tried to run. However, instead of sticking to her, she grabbed a metal panel from the side and quickly tossed it behind her, allowing the web to stick to that instead. Having evaded the shot, she continued running away as fast as she could from the Shifter.

" _Get back here, child!_ " the Shifter angrily called out to her.

Wendy paid no mind to it, however, and simply continued on her way. Soon, she reached the observation deck door and quickly ran inside.

"Ah, forget it!" the Shifter dismissed before pulling on the webs that it had shot, which pulled up Dipper, Mabel, and Ryland together. It then focused its sight on Dipper. " _I already have just who I need!_ "

"No! Wait!" Dipper pleaded.

" _Hand over the journal this instant, boy!_ " the Shifter demanded, as it drew a set of claws with one of his legs and held it up to his throat. " _Or am I going to have to pry it from you?_ "

"Hey ugly!"

Everyone's eyes then turned back over in Wendy's direction, all the way across the lab and beside the door to the observation room. Despite the distance, they were able to see her visibly holding out a red booklet of some sort within her hands. On the front of it, there was a hint of gold that looked like a six-fingered hand. The entire booklet resembled one of Ford's journals.

"Look what I just found in the observation room!" she said as she held it out to them. "You know, Dipper's journal is great and all, but why settle for that when you could have one of the originals just like you wanted?"

"Wendy, what are you doing?!" Dipper asked, confused as to what she was trying to accomplish.

" _No…_ " the Shifter said in disbelief as he looked on at the distant booklet. " _Could it really be?_ "

"You want it? Come and get it!" Wendy challenged as she ran back onto the observation deck with the book in hand.

Taking Wendy's challenge, the Shifter proceeded to throw Dipper, Mabel, and Ryland at a wall, blasting them all with a web to stick and entrap them on the wall. With the teens trapped, it lept off from the wall, shifting back into its rolly polly form to ball up and roll quickly over toward her location.

"WENDY!" Dipper called out desperately.

* * *

As the Shifter rolled up to the door of the observation deck, it quickly swapped into its rock monster form again. Without hesitation or withdrawal, it proceeded to smash straight through the door, decimating the decontamination chamber entirely. It then transformed back into its normal form as it carefully stepped onto the deck.

As it walked onto the deck, it glanced it's head around for Wendy. But she didn't appear directly within its initial line of sight.

" _Where are you, human?_ " it asked furiously. " _I've grown tired of your little games of hide and seek! Reveal yourself and surrender the journal at once!_ "

As it looked around the deck, it failed to take a moment to glance behind it's back to spot Wendy in the corner. There, she was silently crouched as she had her ax wielded and ready to strike.

Unnoticed by the Shifter, she proceeded to stand back to her feet and charge herself at it with a vicious battle cry.

" _AHHHHHH!_ "

Caught off-guard, the Shifter turned around to face her but was too late. At that point, Wendy had managed to successfully lay a hit in on its chest. The blade of the ax had pierced straight through the Shifter's skin, prompting it to cry out in agony as the wound oozed green blood.

Knowing it wouldn't be enough, she pulled the ax out and continued to hack at it. Each time she hit, she grunted and yelled viciously, putting her all into every single swing. She hit it in the side, the leg, the back, and in it's swollen arm, not holding back with any of her blows.

They had already tried to freeze it and that failed. Now, she was handling things her way.

After striking it multiple times throughout its body, she decided that she had done enough. She stood back with her ax, the blade covered in green blood, and watched the Shifter as it coughed and sputtered weakly.

"Had enough yet?" she asked through her panting.

To her surprise, the Shapeshifter began to laugh. As it turned back toward her, she held her ax back up readily.

" _Foolish child. Have you forgotten? I'm a Shapeshifter! Any part of me that you break…_ " It cut himself off as it suddenly started to regenerate and heal the wounds that it had taken from the ax. " _...I can easily repair!_ "

"And I can easily break again!" Wendy stated as she held the ax in her hand and proceeded to charge back at it.

However, she was quickly subdued as the Shapeshifter made a rapid switch into the Hide-Behind and swiftly evaded her charge before making yet another switch into Gremloblin and kicking her hard in the back, which sent her flying into a wall, bashing the side of her face.

She kneeled down to the ground in pain for a moment, but soon stood back up and gave the Shifter an angry glare as she wiped some blood that dripped down the side of her face from her nose.

"Is that the best you got?"

" _Why do you insist on fighting me, child?_ " the Shifter asked, somewhat surprised. " _Do my monstrous forms not intimidate you?_ "

"They did at first," she admitted. "But then you started switching forms so much that now, I can hardly tell them apart from one another. Now I don't care what you turn into. They all look the same to me! So go ahead!" she dared as she entered a fighting stance with her ax. "Hit me with your  _scariest_  form!"

The Shifter switched back into its normal form and smirked at this request. " _If you insist…_ "

At that moment, the Shifter swapped forms yet again. This time into an exact look-alike of Wendy in her current appearance. As the shifting process finished, the Shifter grinned at her, leaving Wendy with her mouth agape.

"Oh man...I  _had_  to open my mouth…" she said to herself, immediately regretting her decision.

"YAHHH!" the Shifter screamed with her voice as it jumped up into the air and tackled her to the ground, forcing her ax out of her hands.

Both of them took immediate notice of the unwielded ax on the ground, which caused them to start to fight one another in order to reach it. Being in essentially the same form, many of the same moves and fighting tactics that one person used was repeated by the other. Every punch that Wendy made, the Shifter repeated. And every kick the Shifter made, Wendy repeated.

Though, the moves were more harmful to Wendy than the Shifter, as she didn't have multiple other forms to switch out and into to keep the battle going. But despite how even the fight had been turning out, the Shifter remained persistent on copying her form, which actually seemed to work in his favor, as it came off as distracting for Wendy to have to fight herself. Meanwhile, the Shifter's perspective of Wendy stayed the same throughout their encounters, and so there was nothing to distract it.

Eventually, the Shifter got the better of Wendy and managed to get its hands on her ax before she did. It then kicked her in the face, sending her back down to the ground as it jumped on top of her with the ax in hand.

" _Spare me your time-wasting shticks, human_ ," the Shifter ordered as it grew annoyed. " _The only person you're going to hurt in this fight is yourself. So make things easy for the both of us and hand over Ford's journal!_ "

"Oh, you mean this thing?" Wendy asked smugly as she pulled out the booklet resembling Ford's journal from her flannel shirt. However, a closer look verified that the booklet wasn't actually Ford's journal at all. "This isn't the journal, genius! It's just some old manual with a journal cover painted on the front that I found in the file cabinet. I just showed it to lure you away from my friends. Worked like a charm!"

" _AH! You've tested my patience for the last time!_ " the Shifter shouted, reaching peak infuriation.

"What are you going to do? Keep threatening me?" Wendy asked insultingly.

" _You must be stupid for thinking you could fight me alone!_ " the Shifter claimed as it held the ax closer to her face. " _You may have beaten me last time, but it wasn't something you managed on your own! Now, all of your friends are trapped and can't do anything to save you! And once I'm done here with you, I'm going to finish them next!_ "

"Man, my voice does  _not_  suit the evil monologuing kind…" Wendy claimed, feeling weird hearing her own voice talking back to her with such an odd vocabulary that she'd never use the way the Shifter did.

" _I've already run out of patience!_ " the Shifter claimed as it put a boot on her throat before lifting the ax above its head with both hands, preparing to strike. " _Enjoy your NEW form!_ "

Wendy's eyes squinted fearfully as she prepared herself for the Shifter's final attack.

However, the Shifter was suddenly kicked from behind by an unnoticed figure. The kick was hard enough to send it flying right over her and through the open security room door. As its body touched the ground, it fell on top of multiple different trigger blocks, enabling the trap. Soon after, both doors to the room shut. The room itself shook for a moment before blocks began sticking outward from the floor, walls, and ceiling.

" _What the?!_ " the Shifter questioned fearfully as it watched the security room begin to close in on it. " _No, no, no!_ "

Aware of its own lack of knowledge on how to get past the room on its own, the Shifter began to panic. It then began quick-shifting through multiple forms in an attempt to stop the room itself.

It turned into its giant rock monster form and began aggressively punching a wall of blocks. It turned into a multi-legged creature with a head that resembled a hand, which it clenched into a fist and slammed down on the floor blocks. It lastly turned into the spider-like creature and began rapidly shooting webs everywhere, coating the walls, floor, and ceiling in attempt to stop the blocks from moving. But all of the attempts to save itself were to no avail.

" _NOOOOO!_ " it cried out hopelessly as it banged on the wall with its fist in its normal form.

Wendy was left surprised by what had happened to the Shifter and stared at the closed security room door in shock. She then turned back around and glanced up at the person who had kicked it inside, her eyes bulging at the revelation.

"Derrick?!"

"Oh, hey!" Derrick greeted as he flicked his fingers at her. "You  _do_  know my name!"

"I don't understand," she said, scratching her head in slight confusion. "How'd you know which one of us was which?"

"Well, Ford told me that impatience was a weakness the Shapeshifter carries throughout its forms. So, when I caught up in time to catch you two fighting, I also caught an evil Wendy saying they ran out of patience. I paired two and two together and yeah!" he explained as he walked over to the sealed security room door and leaned his back against it victoriously. "Now, that thing's going to die by being slowly crushed. Talk about irony, huh?"

"Wow," she replied, still in utter disbelief that Derrick, of all people, had been the one to come to the rescue.

She didn't know him all that well and therefore never had much thought about him, but after what he had done, she had gained a whole new level of respect for him that she didn't have for him before.

She smiled. "That's good stuff, man. You get major credit for that one. Thanks."

Derrick smiled back at her earnestly. "Just happy to be useful for once."

_BANG! BANG! BANG!_

" _LET ME OUT!_ " the Shifter cried out as it banged its fist on the blocks of the wall connected to the observation deck.

"Give it up, man!" Wendy demanded through the door as she stood back up on her feet, brushing her hands down on her clothes. "We beat you! This time, for good! It's over!"

The banging on the wall had stopped at that moment, only to soon be replaced with sinister laughter from the Shifter.

" _Maybe for me...but not for you…_ "

"Dude, are you still trying to be scary?" Wendy asked. "The shtick died when you got outsmarted by a bunch of teens."

" _Oh, you don't even know it, child_ ," the Shifter claimed with a chuckle as the walls continued to close in on it. " _But a grave future awaits you and your friends. Most specifically, you. Soon, you'll let your guard down, and before you know it, you'll make the greatest mistake of your life_."

"I've already made the greatest mistake of my life a few months ago," Wendy replied as she guiltily referred to her expulsion from the local college. "Whatever I do next won't compare."

" _Whatever you say, kid. But you're wrong_ ," the Shifter claimed as the blocks started to tightly confine it within a corner, it's crushing imminent. " _You think dealing with me may have been bad, but the very next threat you face will be even worse. You feel clever now, but in time, it'll be YOU who feels dumb for their mistake. And THIS will be the last thing anyone will ever remember you for..._ "

Just as the blocks started to close in against the Shifter, it quickly swapped into its form of Wendy, pressing itself against the wall as it began to get crushed.

" _AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-_ "

_SLAM!_

The Shifter's final scream cut off as the blocks had finally crushed it, finishing it off once and for all.

Wendy and Derrick stood back on the observation deck, staring on at the locked security room door in utter shock at what they had just heard. Wendy was substantially more uncomfortable than he was. Not because of the Shifter's threats, but because of the sound of hearing herself getting crushed to death. The sound unnerved her more than the entire Shifter encounter itself, so much to the point that she weakly dropped to her knees. She placed her hands on the floor and faced the ground, shutting her eyes as she tried to process everything.

Derrick placed his hands in the pockets of his hoodie as he continued to stare uncomfortably at the door. "Now, I think I'm finally starting to see what Dipper was talking about…"

Wendy glanced over her shoulder and looked at him. "What?"

"...the beauty of this town."

* * *

A few hours passed as Derrick and Wendy went back through the bunker to go and free their friends from the Shapeshifter's webbing. It had also been explained that Derrick had killed the Shifter itself by pushing it into the security room. Neither Ford and McGucket had appeared to mind, both agreeing how dangerous the creature was and that it was for the best that it be eliminated for good than risking it destroying all of them.

After a long process of removing the webs, the entire bunker was inspected for damages. With all the Shifter had done to it while initially hunting down Dipper and Wendy, it was quickly deduced that a lot needed to be fixed and replaced. However, to everyone's surprise, Ford and McGucket  _still_  didn't seem to mind.

Eventually, it had been decided that it was time to just leave the bunker. It was a bit of a complicated process, as they had to get past the reopened security room, which still contained the crushed remains of the Shapeshifter. Despite turning into Wendy before it was crushed, the remains appeared as though it had reverted back to its normal form at the last moment. Even with that in mind, Wendy had refused to look at the remains and just insisted on getting back up to surface as quickly as possible.

Once everyone had exited, McGucket promptly closed up the bunker again. Nearly everyone stood outside with a look of exhaustion or dread on their face as they continued to go through the various emotions following the events that had just occurred.

"Well, I'd say that was a pretty satisfying sequel adventure!" Soos claimed as he suddenly put on a cheerful smile. "I'll admit though, I'm not too sure if that was better than the original or not. It was definitely a lot edgier. Guess I'll have to consider this when I write my video review…"

McGucket looked down at his hands, where he held the drained Quantum Destabilizer that they had retrieved from the bunker. "Well, Stanford, despite all that we've been through today, at least we managed to retrieve the Destabilizer."

"Yeah, that's a plus," Ford admitted as he examined the weapon. "Now, all we gotta do is start figuring out how to repurpose it as a dream demon mind destroyer for Stanley. That's a whole 'nother task of its own though. It'll probably take days to really piece together a viable schematic."

At that moment, the winds started picking up as a helicopter began flying overhead to the group. McGucket waved at the pilot as it started to land on the open path ahead.

"If ya want, I can take ya back over to the mansion and we can go over all the old schematics for designs I never finished," he offered. "Might be able to find somethin' for us to work off of."

"Sure, I have time," Ford accepted before turning back to the bunker. "But, what's going to happen with the bunker? The Shapeshifter really tore the lab apart."

"I'll worry about cleaning up all the messes down there," he claimed as he started walking over to the landing helicopter. "Then, I say one of these days, we both come back and redesign my redesigns together. Ya know, make the place viable for the both of us this time."

Ford smiled at his partner's generous offer. "That sounds like a plan."

"Dudes, can I come with?" Soos suddenly asked as he walked up to the two. " _The Avenging Heroes: Age of Ultra Robot Guy_  starts in an hour and I think it'd be pretty dope to watch it in all its 4k glory in the old Northwest screening room!"

"We have a screening room?" McGucket asked, scratching his head at this revelation. "Huh. Guess that's another room for the butlers to clean." He then gestured for Soos to hop on the chopper. "But, sure, fella! Hop aboard!"

"Yes!" Soos cheered as he fist pumped the air before climbing on board the helicopter ahead of Ford and McGucket. "This helicopter ride will finally give me a chance to eat the bean soup lunch that Melody packed me!"

Ford and McGucket's eyes bulged in fear as he Soos proceeded to pull out his brown lunch bag from his pocket.

"Bean soup lunch?" McGucket asked, growing regretful of his decision to bring Soos aboard.

Soos then ate a spoonful of the wrapped-up bean soup. He then glanced outside at the others who stood behind. "Oh, where are my manners? Any of you dudes want to come along too? We could share the soup while we're at it."

Dipper, Mabel, Derrick, and Ryland exchanged hesitant looks of disgust with one another.

"Uh...yeah, we're good, Soos!" Dipper replied with a wave.

"Yeah, we'll just see you and Grunkle Ford back at the Shack!" Mabel added as she waved as well. She then gave remorseful looks to Grunkle Ford and McGucket. "Good luck, you guys…"

"Right…" Ford replied as he and McGucket waved back regretfully just as the helicopter began to lift off. "See you kids later…"

" _Avenging_   _Heroes!_ " Soos shouted triumphantly as the helicopter gained speed and began to fly away.

Dipper, Mabel, Derrick, and Ryland continued to watch as the chopper flew off, each of them feeling a sense of remorse for what Ford and McGucket would likely endure soon.

"Poor old men," Ryland said as he shook his head.

"Drat! And I actually  _wanted_  to watch The Avenging Heroes on TV tonight!" Mabel claimed somewhat disappointed.

"Maybe we could go back to the Shack and watch it there," Ryland suggested. "End the night simple after such a crazy date."

"That'd be great!" Mabel agreed to do before remembering something. "Except, my Grunkle Stan is still at the Shack, and after earlier, I'm pretty sure he'd try to be a bit annoying toward us again…"

"My place then?" Ryland offered instead. "I mean, my folks can be annoying too, but they usually leave the living room TV free around this time."

"I like the way you think!" Mabel said with a smile, satisfied with the idea.

"Hey, uh, not to impede on your time together, but Derrick and I like the Avenging Heroes too," Dipper claimed as he and Derrick approached the two, both equally interested in watching the movie as well.

"Oh, sure! You two can join us!" she replied with a sly smile.

"Wait, seriously?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah! I mean, if you two can put up with us kissing during all the boring scenes," Mabel claimed as she placed her fingers between Ryland's. Her words had put him off-guard and prompted his eyes to suddenly bulge, having had no prior knowledge of these so-called plans of hers.

Dipper and Derrick's faces immediately put on looks of disgust as she brought this up. Derrick remained just a bit more curious though.

"What does she consider boring?" he asked Dipper.

"It's a superhero movie, so basically all the scenes where people aren't punching each other," Dipper explained.

"So, like two-thirds of the whole movie?" Derrick realized, eyes narrowing. "Yeah, no thanks. I'd rather projectile vomit everywhere."

"Suit yourselves!" Mabel said as she began walking off with Ryland. "More microwaved popcorn for us!"

"But...I kinda  _like_  the boring parts..." Ryland told her in a somewhat mopey tone as they walked off, not really finding any part of the movie boring enough to start a kissing session. That and he was just generally nerdier when it came to comic-book movies.

At that point, Dipper and Derrick were left behind as the new couple proceeded to go on their own way.

"Ah, whatever. We can watch the Avenging Heroes at my place instead," Derrick offered. "My granddad's probably sleeping in the living room sofa chair though, so we'll have to move that out of the way first, but we should be good after."

"Yeah, that's fine, I guess," Dipper accepted. "And hey, man, I wanna apologize for being kind of a jerk earlier. I mean, sure, you're a bit rusty around the edges with how you steal and stuff, but at the end of the day, you're still just as much a friend to me as the rest of these guys. And after Wendy said you were the one who beat the Shapeshifter, I think I figured that you really are starting to get a grasp of things around here. All that said, I'm sorry if you've been feeling pushed to the side."

"We're cool, man," Derrick said with a forgiving shrug. "It's not like you were really wrong anyway. I do have to work on myself and my ways from back home, so I wouldn't say I have a grasp of anything just yet. As I said to Wendy, I'm just happy to be useful for once."

"Well, I can assure you that it won't be the last time," Dipper replied as he gave him a brotherly punch in the shoulder.

"Thanks, man," Derrick said with a smile. He then noticed a pay phone to the side and gestured over to it. "Anyway, I'm gonna go call my granddad real quick. Whether he answers or not will say if he's awake or asleep."

"Hey, would it be cool if I invited Wendy?" Dipper asked as she suddenly came back to mind. "She's usually one for movie night."

"Go for it," Derrick shrugged carelessly. "Though, she might be a little shaken up from  _you-know-what_."

Realizing what he was talking about, Dipper turned his head back over to the bunker tree. There, he saw Wendy still standing next to it, staring right up at it.

"Right," he nodded, acknowledging how her state of mind might've been a bit messed up after what had happened back in the bunker. Nonetheless, he turned back and casually made his way over to her. "Hey, Wendy!"

Despite the call of her name, she continued to stare up at the tree. Her face displayed a variety of mixed emotions at that moment, between confusion, sorrow, guilt, and anger.

He couldn't see her face, but he knew that something was up based on her lack of response and general posture. "Wendy? You okay?"

She heard him previously and heard him again. However, the second time she acknowledged that she was still alive and that the adventure was over now. And so, she let out a grateful sigh before smiling as she turned back to him.

"Yeah, I'm good."

"Well, if you're up for it...Derrick and I were wondering if you wanted to head back to his place to watch Avenging Heroes," he offered as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Since, it'll probably be one of the last times we get to have a movie night for a while. But, you don't have to go if you don't want to…"

"Oh,  _don't_  start with that stuff, man!" she said with a chuckle as she shoved him in the arm. "Trust me, I'm down.  _Especially_  after an adventure like that, I think I could use a little superhero movie brain-frying."

"Well, I just called home and my granddad didn't pick up," Derrick claimed as he stepped back over to the two. "So that's pretty much a guaranteed sign that granddad's sleeping and we gotta move his chair first."

"That's fine by me," Wendy replied with a casual shrug. "I call not being the one who has to move his feet though."

"Me too," Dipper quickly jumped on before giving Derrick an apologetic look. "Sorry, Derrick."

"Wow, even after defeating the bad guy, I'm  _still_  the guy that my friends like to screw," Derrick said somewhat annoyedly as he crossed his arms, though giving off a slight smile to assure his words weren't all in bad taste.

"Nah, you're cool, man," Dipper reassured him.

"Yeah, I just don't wanna touch an old man's feet," Wendy cleared up.

"You think I want to either?" Derrick asked.

"Well, he is  _your_  granddad," Dipper pointed out.

"Yeah, but we're watching the movie at  _my_  house," Derrick argued.

"Your house where we have to move your gramp's chair first before we even sit down to watch it," Wendy argued back.

"How about we just rock, paper, scissors it on the way there?" Dipper suggested. "Loser has to move his feet."

"Alright, now  _that's_  an idea I can get down with," Derrick agreed on.

"This is so stupid," Wendy claimed with an amused chuckle.

"You're still going to miss this type of banter when you're gone, aren't you?" Dipper playfully asked her.

"Yeah," she nodded with a warm smile as she looked over at him. "I'm definitely gonna miss this."

Dipper's question was meant to come off more as humorous than sentimental. But looking back over at her, he couldn't help but give a warm smile back. The day was rough, but it was nice to see that by the end of it, they could still share the same old smiles and laughs they knew each other for.

Leaving the darkness behind in favor of embracing the light.

* * *

 

 

_9-3-5 2-1-7-19 13-5-12-20 23-5-14-20 12-5-6-20 15-21-20 6-15-18 20-15-15 12-15-14-7_


	33. Little Red Riding: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Wendy prepares for college, Dipper and Mabel notice she is emotionally troubled by her family and decide to try and find out why.  
> Meanwhile, Stan finds a gift in Wendy's unexpected skill as a getaway driver.

Deep in the woods on a Wednesday afternoon, Soos drove in his pick up truck. Mabel sat beside him in the passenger seat, whereas Dipper sat in the backseat next to a bunch of cardboard boxes stacked amongst one another.

They were on their way to Wendy's house, as she had previously requested that they bring over whatever empty boxes they could spare for her to use to pack for her upcoming move next week. With that noted and the Mystery Shack being closed for the day, the three had decided to take her up on her request and search the back for spare boxes, which they had found a fair amount of.

As they went through the woods to get to the Corduroy cabin, Dipper found himself a bit unnerved by how deep the residence was. Of course, it hadn't been the first time he had been to Wendy's house, but he still found it a bit unsettling on how isolated her family lived from the rest of the town, being plopped down right in the middle of the woods.

"Gee, I don't know how Wendy does it living out here all her life," Dipper said as he looked out the window as they drove. "Growing up in a house where you could get attacked by a bear just for checking the mail is terrifying."

"Yeah, for  _you_ ," Mabel jabbed. "But this is  _Wendy_ we're talking about! Growing up in that same house, she's probably been raised to wrestle all the bears she's come across."

"Yeah, dude. Wendy's too much of a boss to let something like a bear freak her out," Soos agreed.

Dipper sighed as he rested his head on his arm. "Still can't believe that by tomorrow, it'll be exactly one week before she leaves."

"On a positive note, she'll have the comfort of knowing that we helped provide her with boxes for moving," Mabel claimed.

"I don't really see how that comes off as a note worth mentioning," Dipper replied as he looked over at the box stack next to him, raising an eyebrow as he noticed something. "Wait...Pizza boxes? Christmas present boxes? What the...? Why did you guys bring these?"

"I didn't bring those. That was all Soos," Mabel deflected.

"Soos?"

"What? Wendy said she needed boxes. She didn't say what  _kind_  of boxes," Soos defended. "So I just brought whatever boxes I could find."

"Soos, Wendy clearly meant boxes that could help her pack," Dipper told him. "What exactly is she going to put in an old pizza box from last week?"

"It could work as a good T-shirt or makeup holder…" Mabel thought aloud. "In fact, I think I know what fashion class is selling for next year's fundraiser!"

Soos made a turn in the road and spotted a cabin up ahead. "Looks like we're coming up her place, dudes!"

He pulled up in front of the house and parked on the curb. As they pulled up, the three spotted three redhead boys of different ages wrestling one another on the front lawn. They aggressively tackled one another to the grass, looking as though they were in the middle of some fight.

Soos opened up the car door and stepped out, looking on at the fight. "Woah! What ticked off these dudes?"

"Relax, those are just Wendy's brothers," Mabel cleared up as she got out of the car.

"Yeah. Marcus, Kevin, and Gus," Dipper named as he walked up beside the two.

"They're always this  _fighty-minded_ ," Mabel claimed.

"... _aaannd_  that is not a word," Dipper remarked.

"Hold on. These dudes actually have names?" Soos asked. "I always used to think of them as unimportant background characters. Go figure, huh?"

"Hey boys!" Mabel waved to the Corduroy brothers.

At that moment, the three brothers immediately stopped wrestling to turn over to look at Mabel. They smiled. "Hey Mabel!"

"Hey guys, is Wendy home?" Dipper asked as he opened up the other backdoor of the pickup where the boxes sat and took them into his arms. "We came to drop off some stuff for her."

"Nope," Marcus said as he attempted to stand up from the grass, only to be violently tackled back down by Kevin.

"Wends went out with the pops," Kevin said as he pushed hard against his brother's face, trying to pin him. "But she should be coming home any minute now."

At that moment, Marcus grabbed Kevin by the throat and held him in the air for a minute before slamming him back on the ground. "You tried!"

Right after, Marcus was kicked in the face by his youngest brother, Gus, who jumped into a victory pose right after. "Boosh! I win again!"

"Jesus Christ, Gus! What the hell?" Kevin angrily asked as he stood up and looked down at his little brother. "This isn't karate! No kicking people in the face!"

"Who made up those rules?" Gus asked, crossing his arms.

"We did! This isn't the first time we've done this before!" Marcus shouted as he rubbed the side of his face.

"And this isn't the first time I've kicked you in the face either!" Gus argued.

"What are you even trying to argue?!" Kevin asked, growing frustrated by Gus's attempts at reasoning.

"Seriously, what kind of game even is this?" Dipper asked as he and the others spectated the brawl.

"Oh, we're not playing a game. This is just how we decide who gets the last slice of leftover pizza," Marcus casually cleared up, which received supporting nods from Kevin and Gus.

Dipper, Mabel, and Soos stared at them for a brief moment in slight bewilderment at their outlandish ways of settling such a minor ordeal.

"You see? This is why I wished for an infinite slice of pizza," Soos told the twins. "None of this last man standing stuff for me."

_SCREEEEE!_

Everyone's attention then turned toward the street, where a car suddenly came speeding toward the cabin. It took a sharp turn before skidding onto the curb in front of Soos's pickup and parking. The driver's seat door flew open and Wendy stepped out angrily before slamming the door shut with the strong force of one arm. At the same time, Manly Dan stepped out of the passenger seat with an angry look of his own.

"God dammit, dad! Why do you have to be the most overbearing person in the world to drive with?" Wendy scolded angrily.

"Overbearing? I'm trying to watch out for our lives, Wendy!" Manly Dan tried to defend.

"Oh boy," Kevin said with an eye roll.

"Here they go again," Gus said with an awaiting sigh.

"After our lives?!" Wendy questioned. "I have my license, dad! I've had it for three years now!"

"I don't know  _how!_  Whenever you get behind the wheel, you always turn into a jittery wreck!" Manly Dan told her bluntly.

"Because you always stress me the hell out!" Wendy claimed.

"You think you're stressed?" Manly Dan asked, pointing a finger at her. "Imagine being in  _my_  shoes! My  _big, manly boots_ , Wendy! I don't shake in 'em when I wrestle a bear! But when I get into a car with  _you_ , Wendy, I  _quiver_  in them!"

"Again, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if you'd stop being so stressful with your needless yelling whenever I make a turn!"

"My yelling ain't needless! I'm trying to help ya! I'm trying to  _teach_  ya!"

"I don't need your help!" Wendy shouted while slapping his hand away. "I can drive my friends around just fine!"

"Tell that to the speeding ticket you got street racing with those friends last year!" Manly Dan brought up, which prompted shocked looks from Dipper and Mabel at this revelation.

"Okay, that was  _last_  year!" Wendy tried to brush off. "And I already told you that I didn't think I'd get pulled over! I thought I was going under the speed limit!"

"You  _thought!_  But you weren't!" Manly Dan pointed out. "And that's not good enough! At this point in your life, you should already know what it means to be a responsible driver!"

"This is coming from the man who rammed into us with his truck because I called Sev'ral Timez overrated," Mabel referred over to Dipper.

Wendy wanted to argue further, but she was done with it at that point. She crossed her arms and turned away from her father, tightening her eyes shut as she tried to mentally keep herself from bursting. At the same time, her brothers, Dipper, Mabel, and Soos looked on at the ordeal, the latter three questioning whether or not they should even be there to listen to this argument.

"It's never good enough for you, is it?" Wendy said as she hung her head down away from her dad.

"Wendy, a week from tomorrow, you're leaving two hours up north to continue going to college," Manly Dan mentioned. "Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have any issues with this. But since you pulled that stunt that got you kicked out locally, I've had all the reason to question my trust in letting you go on your own. If it were up to me, I'd keep you behind to stay with the family. But it  _ain't_  up to me, so instead, in the little time we have left together, I gotta make sure you're prepared for the real world. And that don't mean going  _easy_  on you. Because dammit, Wendy, the real world ain't easy! And you gotta get that through your head now before it  _really_  comes out to get ya!" He put his hand on her shoulder and attempted to turn her around to face him. "You hear me?!"

"I've heard it for nineteen years!" she yelled at him as she grabbed his hand and aggressively pushed it away. "And you know what? Yeah, I  _have_  made a bunch of mistakes and poor decisions over the last year or so. I've  _been_  admitting it. But I bet if mom were still here, she wouldn't be nearly as overwhelming as  _you've_  been about them to me while I'm at the lowest point in my life."

She stormed off toward the house, leaving Manly Dan in utter shock at her last statement. Even Marcus, Kevin, and Gus let out simultaneous gasps in shock. Dipper and Mabel looked somewhat surprised as well, considering it was the first time they had ever heard Wendy mention her own mother. Despite the high tensions, Soos just casually waved as Wendy stomped past them.

"'Sup Wendy! We got you your boxes!" he greeted as he gestured over to the stack of boxes in Dipper's arms.

Wendy glanced over at the three, finally noticing them. "Oh, right." She walked over to Dipper and took the stack of boxes from him. "Thanks, guys. I really appreciate it."

After a brief acknowledgment, she quickly resumed making her way back toward her house, while the rest of her family stood stunned.

"Um...just so you know, there may be some pizza boxes and other non-moving boxes in there," Dipper reminded her, trying to stick to the topic of their own involvement.

"It's alright," Wendy dismissed. "Trust me, as long as it helps me move the hell out of here, then it's fine by me." She kicked the front door open and glanced behind her one last time. "Anyway, I'll just see you guys at work tomorrow."

She kicked the door shut behind her as she walked inside. Her brothers exchanged looks with one another before glancing back at their father, who still stood stunned by the car.

"D-dad?" Kevin asked with a look of concern.

Manly Dan blinked once before putting a hand on his head as if he had suddenly grown dizzy. He put his other hand on the car to steady himself, shaking his head violently as his mind barely started to relax.

"I...I need to clear my head," Manly Dan said simply as he walked over to the driver's seat of the car and got inside.

"Dad, wait!" Marcus called out as he and his younger siblings attempted to run after his car.

However, it was too late. Manly Dan had immediately started up the car and sped off down the road until he was out of sight. Despite this, the brothers stayed determined and continued running after their dad at their fastest running speed. Dipper quickly grabbed ahold of Gus's arm before he took off, though.

"Woah, what the hell just happened?" Dipper asked him. "You guys said this has happened before?"

"The arguing has been a regular thing between them since Wends got expelled," Gus explained. "But it's never gotten  _this_  bad before. Dad hasn't driven off like that in  _years!_ "

"Him driving off like that is a thing?" Mabel asked, raising a concerned eyebrow.

"It used to be. There were days where he just got so upset that he drove off and never came back until late. That's why we're trying to go after him!" Gus explained before turning away and sprinting off to catch up with his older brothers. " _GUYS! WAIT!_ "

Dipper, Mabel, and Soos stared off at them as they all ran off in an attempt to catch up to their dad, who was already long out of their current line of sight.

"Why do I feel like this is something to be concerned about?" Dipper asked, looking back and forth between Soos and Mabel somewhat nervously.

"The driving off part is a little unnerving," Mabel admitted. "But other than that, I'm sure it's just a case of normal family drama since Wendy's moving soon. I mean, moves are stressful! I'm sure it's nothing worth worrying about from our end."

"Mabel's right, dude," Soos agreed. "We just need to be supportive of Wendy. Things are getting tougher for her around this time. Just best to roll with it rather than interfere." He then walked over to the driver's seat of his pickup and sat back inside, starting it up. "C'mon, let's head back to the Shack."

" _Woo!_ " Mabel shouted as she slid across the hood of the pickup to the passenger side, opening up the door and getting inside.

Dipper got back into the pickup and buckled his seatbelt before staring out the window and at the cabin. Despite being told not to worry, he still felt a sense of uneasiness at what had just happened. He had only been aware of Wendy's move for a few days now and it seemed like every time it was brought up, there was a sense of dread that came with it. Though, he did dread it, as one of his closest friends was going away when their summer was still basically getting started.

But more recently, he's seen another side of Wendy he hadn't seen too much of in the past. That being her more emotional side. A more damaged side. Sure, everyone has feelings and no one is emotionally invincible. But he's grown accustomed to seeing the fun, cool, and laid-back side of her. Since meeting up with one another for the first time in four years, he hadn't seen as much of that.

Of course, she had admitted once before that she wasn't always laid-back and even said she was almost always stressed because of her family. And that's what worried him. Mabel and Soos claimed that the current dilemma she's been facing is just family drama to be expected. But what if she had always been going through the same type of drama, except the extra stress from the move has just been pushing her to her breaking point?

All Dipper knew was that he was concerned. But he didn't feel like this was a situation that called for him.

Hopefully, things stayed that way.

* * *

The next morning came, and Ford had already been up and awake for a few hours. Having already dressed up, he sat at the kitchen table with the empty Quantum Destabilizer sitting on top of it.

It had been three days since the bunker adventure where they had retrieved the weapon. In its current state, it had no use, as all the power that he had managed to obtain for it inside the portal had been finished ever since his failed attempt to use it on Bill himself. He continued to think about how if he had managed that shot, they probably wouldn't even be in their current situation.

However, he knew that a lot of other events probably wouldn't have happened the way they did either. Like making up with his brother and such.

But with the Destabilizer, the current goal was to build a schematic that repurposed the death ray into some sort of mind gun that could destroy Bill inside Stan's mind without taking out his memory again or destroying his mind in any other way. It was not the easiest thing to come up with alone, therefore, he was going to turn to McGucket's help. With him being the inventor of the memory gun, he had more of an idea on how to build a mind weapon than Ford did, and that would be a great help in completing the task.

They had looked over old schematics last time they met, but they found nothing particularly notable for use. So rather than taking from old ideas, they decided to come up with something new and intuitive, which was why Ford was preparing to meet him that day.

As he inspected the weapon, Stan eventually walked into the kitchen in his usual sleepwear with a night robe on top of it.

"Morning, Stanley," Ford greeted as he looked up at his entering brother.

"Mornin', Poindexter," Stan greeted back with a tired yawn as he scratched his backside. He quickly noticed Ford already dressed as though he's about to head somewhere. "Where are you off to?"

"I've got a meeting with Fiddleford," Ford replied. "We retrieved the Quantum Destabilizer the other day, but it has no charge left and we need to figure out how to use it in a way that safely neutralizes Bill from your mind. Fiddleford's good at that type of stuff, so we're hoping we can put something together."

"Just say you're going to a friend's place to fix my problem," Stan said as he rubbed his eyes a bit annoyedly. "Seriously, it's too early for me to be stomaching your nerd talk."

"My, what a grateful man you are, Stanley," Ford sarcastically replied with an eye roll.

"Oh, please. Just because it's too early for me to tolerate your nerdy vocab doesn't mean I'm ungrateful," Stan assured him as he opened up the fridge and took out a carton of milk, which he promptly frowned at. "Skim milk?! Seriously?! They still make this stuff? And Soos  _buys_  it?! Yeesh, and they call  _me_  a criminal. Whole or nothing, Soos!"

He walked over to the sink and proceeded to start dumping out the skim milk carton down the drain. However, as he dumped the milk out, it had a yellower color rather than a normal white color.

"Ugh! It's spoiled too!" Stan shouted in disgust. "Soos can't even take good care of bad milk!" He quickly turned on the water faucet and washed down the expired milk before disposing of the carton in the trash can. He let out an annoyed sigh as he started making his way out of the kitchen. "Well, I wasn't planning on putting pants on today but someone's gotta do something about this."

"Hang on, where are you going?" Ford asked him, raising an eyebrow.

"Gonna go to the store and get the right milk," Stan replied casually as he grabbed a coat from a clothing hook beside the front door. He thought for a second. "Hmm, actually, yeah, who needs pants for that?"

"Woah, woah, woah!" Ford halted as he raced after Stan at the front door. "You can't go out!"

"What? Why not?" Stan asked, confused.

"Have you forgotten? You're sharing a body with a dream demon who could switch in and out of your mind at any point!" Ford reminded him. "With that risk, you're not fit to be out on your own in public."

"That's ridiculous!" Stan replied unhappily. "I'm just going out to get milk! I'm not visiting the president!"

"That doesn't matter," Ford dismissed. "You taking any step outside of this house is risky enough. You need to stay here where someone can keep a close eye on you and what you're doing."

"Ford, I've been stuck in this house since we got here! I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm actually starting to get  _bored_ of doing nothing all day!" Stan admitted. "I mean, c'mon! I feel fine! I've  _been_  fine since the night in the forest!"

"You said the same thing when I trusted you to continue driving us to Gravity Falls. A few hours later, we're plummeting down a cliff," Ford reminded him. "I'm sorry, Stan. But you saying you feel fine doesn't mean anything as long as Bill's in your head. If you present him with any good opportunity to cause chaos on his own, there's a chance he can jump in and take it. And that's not a risk I'm willing to take."

_Beep-beep! Beep-beep!_

Ford looked down at his beeping wristwatch, which was a set alert to let himself know to get ready for McGucket's arrival. "I need to get going."

At that same moment, he noticed Abuelita walking into the kitchen behind Stan.

"Ah, Abuelita!" he called out for, grabbing her attention as he quickly walked over to her. " _Necesito hacer una tarea muy importante. ¿Puedes cuidar a Stanley por mí?_ "

Abuelita glanced over at Stan, with a somewhat hesitant look before looking back at Ford. " _¿De nuevo?_ "

" _Por favor_ ," he pleaded.

Abuelita sighed. " _Tienes suerte de que seas el encantador._ "

" _Muchas gracias. Realmente lo aprecio_ ," Ford replied with a smile, putting a grateful hand on her shoulder, which prompted a somewhat flattered chuckle from her.

Stan glanced back and forth between the two a few times in complete confusion. Not because he didn't understand, as his time in Colombian prison had taught him well. But because he never knew his own brother could pull off Spanish as well as he did. "What the hell just happened?!"

"Abuelita's watching after you again," Ford said as he walked past him and opened the front door, which allowed for the sound of the McGucket's landing helicopter to be heard. "You're staying here, okay? I'll be back later tonight."

"What do you expect me to eat then? There's no milk!" Stan reminded him as he rubbed his stomach.

"I'm sure Abuelita can fix you something that doesn't require milk," Ford said as he walked over to McGucket's helicopter just as it touched the ground.

"Dammit, Stanford! You can't keep cooped up in here forever!" Stan shouted frustratedly as he shook his fist at him.

"And you  _won't_  be cooped up forever!" Ford assured him as he climbed aboard the helicopter and looked back at him. "Trust me, Stanley! We're working as hard as we can on this weapon! We just need you to be  _patient!_ "

Just as he let out his final words, Ford ascended into the air in McGucket's helicopter and flew off. Stan watched it fly over the horizon from the porch, glaring at it irritatedly.

It may have only been a few days since they got back to Gravity Falls, but even then, his patience was dwindling. He wanted nothing more than for the damn demon inside his head to be gone already so he could move on with his life. Considering his brother was still working on figuring out an actual weapon design, who knew just how long it would take before it would even be completed?

* * *

In front of the gift shop entrance of the Shack, Dipper and Mabel stood outside and were able to see McGucket's helicopter as it took off with Ford inside. They watched as it flew over their heads, which left behind a trail of heavy wind gusts that blew right over the two.

"Well, there goes Ford," Dipper noted as he held onto his hat.

"You think once this Bill nonsense is over with, we could convince him to ask McGucket if we could use his helicopter to go skydiving?" Mabel asked, enthused by her own idea.

"I wouldn't bet on it," Dipper responded honestly.

"Alright, dudes," Soos's voice suddenly chimed in as he and Melody were both seen walking toward the two. He also held a golf club in each hand. "You two ready to check out this new Mystery Shack attraction I've been working on?"

"You bet we are!" Mabel nodded enthusiastically.

"Yeah, we're always down to check out whatever keeps tricking people into spending money here while also mixing things up a bit," Dipper nodded as well.

"That's the spirit, dawg!" Soos said cheerfully as he offered the golf clubs to them. "Take these."

"Golf clubs?" Dipper questioned as he took the offered item and inspected it.

"That's right!" Soos said as he walked over to the side toward a something that was covered with a large tarp. He gripped the tarp in preparation to unveil what was underneath. "Brand new to the Mystery Shack is the new game of…"

He quickly pulled the tarp off of the structure underneath, unveiling it to be a single mini golf hole, which was designed to look like Stan's head. The hole itself was up a small slope leading into Stan's open mouth.

"...Mystery Golf!" Soos finished as he presented the hole.

"Mini-golf?" Dipper questioned, raising an eyebrow at the design.

"I love it already!" Mabel cheered as she stared at the hole in awe. Her love and skill for the game of mini-golf wasn't a new revelation to anybody.

"Thought you would, dude," Soos claimed as he looked over at her with a smile. "But yeah! I was thinking of another selling point I can advertise for the Shack, and I figured: Hey! What tourist attraction has their own mini-golf course? Think about it! Customers go into the gift shop and buy what they want, but as soon as they go back outside and see this bad boy, they'll wanna stick around for more!"

Dipper understood Soos's mentality behind the attraction but was too distracted by the fact that the hole was Stan's head. "Does Stan know you designed the course around his head?"

"Nope," Melody answered for him. "In fact, he even told him  _not_  to design the course around his head when Soos asked."

"Eh, he's just a shy," Soos claimed. "He's been out of the game for a few years, so he's not used to the idea of his face being seen in the public eye again."

"I thought he said that he just hated the idea of his head being used for a golf hole?" Melody asked as she recalled the time when Soos had asked.

"Typical shy man response," Soos brushed off before taking out a pair of golf balls and holding them out for the twins. "Anyways, dudes. Why don't you give the course a go? It's only one hole for now, but I still plan on charging thirty bucks a person when it goes live for tourists."

"ME FIRST! ME FIRST!" Mabel called out as she grabbed a golf ball from Soos and ran into starting position on the course.

She placed the golf ball down on the fake grass set up of the course. Getting into a position behind the ball, she lined up her aim with the club. With a quick hip wiggle, she whacked the ball, sending it flying up the slope and landing inside Stan's mouth, scoring a perfect hole-in-one.

"WOO! TAKE THAT, GRUNKLE STAN'S FACE!" Mabel cheered as she raised her golf club in the air victoriously.

_BOOM!_

A few seconds after Mabel's hole-in-one, Stan's head promptly burst into a fiery explosion, essentially destroying the entire attraction. Mabel was a decent distance away to be unaffected, yet she took a gust of hot wind to the face as the explosion occurred. As it settled, there were bits of malfunctioning fireworks that went off to the side.

In shock, Mabel stood completely frozen with her golf club still raised in the air. She glanced around somewhat timidly. "Does...does that mean I've gotten  _too_  good?"

"I may have installed a firework rig that was set to go off each time someone scores a hole-in-one," Soos claimed with an awkward chuckle. "Guess I didn't set it up well enough…"

"On the bright side, I was totally filming that whole thing," Melody said as she gestured to her raised phone. "You could go back and crop the explosion and it can make for an epic video effect!"

"Huh, you're right!" Soos realized as he smiled at her. "I was about to say that was a waste of a mini-golf course, but you may have just saved us there! The power of video editing!"

As Soos and Melody fawned over the explosion footage, Dipper and Mabel still remained in a slight state of shock from the explosion. For Dipper, at least, this was interrupted as he looked to the side and noticed a car speeding its way into the Mystery Shack's lot. It skidded into an open space and parked aggressively. Soon enough, Wendy exited the car and slammed the door shut before making her way over to the four.

"There you are, Wendy-dawg!" Soos said as he turned toward Wendy.

"Hey, sorry I'm late," she replied as she rubbed her eye. "Got caught up in a bit of junk back home."

"It's alright. You just missed Mabel blowing up Stan's head with a golf ball," Dipper casually told her with a humored smile, intending to get some sort of shocked chuckle from her. "You should've seen it."

"Right, well, I didn't, so whatever," she said as her voice shook up a bit, which she realized and proceeded to clear her throat.

Dipper was struck a bit by her reply and general reaction to his attempted amusement. Instead of a chuckle, she gave off a sense of bitterness, which was unlike her. But the more he examined her, the more distress he could see in her current state.

Her eyes were swelled up and red as if she had been crying. Her shaky voice seemed to support the idea. On top of that, her hair was a bit messier compared to how she normally brushed it. While she normally let it hang out, there were more notable strands of hair that he could pick out from looking at it. It was as if she made hardly any attempt to brush it earlier.

Generally, she just looked terrible. Her attitude paired with her appearance just said that she was going through something at that moment. And normally, Dipper wouldn't point out these types of deals for fear of making things worse, but it was just too obvious for him not to address or at least voice his concern about.

"Wendy, are you okay?" he simply asked with a genuine look of concern. "Your eyes look kinda-"

"UGH!" she cut off as she immediately realized what he was referring to. In response, she turned away from him and began rubbing her swelled up eyes somewhat aggressively. "I was hoping that wouldn't be a problem…"

Dipper, Mabel, Soos, and Melody each exchanged looks of concern. Soos turned back to Wendy and took a step toward her.

"Wendy, dawg, is something wrong?" he asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm fine, Soos!" she exclaimed irritatedly with a shaken voice as she slapped his hand off of her shoulder and began walking away in the direction of the Shack. "My makeup is just running a bit. I'm gonna go clean it up in the bathroom."

Her persisting aggression was a sign of her obvious denial for her current emotional state and Dipper knew it. There have been relatively few moments where he's seen Wendy when she was hurt or emotionally unsettled, with the most recent recollection being from their bunker adventure a few days ago. They were all hard for him not to remember, therefore, he found it easy to compare those times to her current state.

She was upset and refused to admit it. But being her friend, he didn't want her to feel like she had to be going through things alone.

"You know, Wendy, if something's up, you can talk to us about it," he offered as he took a few following steps behind her as she walked.

"Dammit, Dipper! I already said that I'm fine!" Wendy scolded as she turned back around toward him and pointed her finger at him. Her voice was now incredibly shaken up, almost to the point of a full-on breakdown. "There's nothing to talk about! And even if there was, I'd prefer if all of you would just leave me  _alone!_ "

She immediately turned back and continued stomping on her way toward the Shack, her fists clenched tightly. Dipper's eyes bulged in shock at the fact that she had just scolded him. This was the second time he's suffered this case with her, with the first being the time he selfishly asked if she wanted to go bowling directly after her breakup with Robbie. But that time was him being inconsiderate. This time, he tried to be a friend and just got pushed away for it without an exact idea of what she was going through.

"Gosh, poor Wendy. What's up with her?" Mabel asked as she watched her enter the Mystery Shack.

"I don't know, dude," Soos admitted. "I've never seen her like this before."

"I'm just so...confused…" Dipper said as he rubbed the back of his head. "Lately, she's just seemed so...distressed. I figured the move would be a bit of a weight on her, but could it really be causing her this much emotional turmoil?"

"You think we should keep asking her about it?" Mabel suggested. "Because no matter what she says, clearly, something isn't right."

"Actually, I really don't think  _any_ of us should bug her about this," Melody chimed in. "Yes, she's clearly going through some personal trouble, but she's also clearly not ready to talk about it. And as friends who love and care about her, we should respect that and wait until she's ready to talk. If we keep pestering her with questions now, that'll only add more trouble to what she's already going through. I mean, when I was a kid, we had a family dog named Winston. He was my absolute favorite growing up." Her eyes then went sorrow. "But one day, I was playing with Winston in the driveway and he accidentally got run over by my grandpa while he was backing up his truck. I saw it with my own eyes...but grandpa didn't know and thought it was my brother's skateboard. As you can imagine, I was pretty upset and ran to my room crying. But everyone was so confused and kept asking me what was wrong and tried to get me to talk about it, but all I could think of was the final wince I heard from Winston before grandpa hit him and it was just too much for me and all I wanted was to be left alone. But no, everyone kept asking me QUESTIONS because I guess they expect a nine-year-old girl who just saw their dog die to be able to actually talk it when really she just wants to hide in her closet and bawl her eyes out because she loves and misses her dog so much and they should really  _STOP ASKING HER TO TALK ABOUT IT!_ "

Everyone stared at her for a moment, processing her story while also analyzing how she seemed to relive her distress from that past experience as she recalled it aloud. Dipper and Mabel exchanged concerned looks with one another as neither of them knew how to react or respond. Soos, on the other hand, walked up to her put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"You wanna go out and get some comfort ice cream?"

Melody perked up a bit as he made this offer and looked up at him with a warm smile. "This... _this_  is why I'm marrying you."

Soos smiled as he began leading her toward his parked pickup truck to the side of the lot. He looked over his shoulder and back at the twins. "We'll be back, dudes!"

The twins watched as they entered his truck and promptly drove out of the lot. Still, despite Melody's initial words, Dipper felt the need to do something in regard to Wendy's situation.

"Mabel, I'm going nuts over this Wendy thing," Dipper admitted to her. "Seriously, even before I found out she was moving, I noticed that she's been acting less like herself. Just subtle little nuances that she never had before. And even though I found out about her move, I still don't know  _why_  she's moving in the first place."

"I thought it was because she got expelled from college here so she's going to a new one?" Mabel brought up.

"Yeah, but we still don't know  _why_ she was expelled. Or  _why_ she doesn't want to talk about it," Dipper added. "She said she would explain eventually, but we're already a week away from her move and she hasn't told us anything. Now, she's coming to work crying and angry and doesn't want to tell us why and it's just... _what happened?_  What started this nonsense in the first place? What got her kicked out of college? Was it something so bad that it just hurts her to even think about? I mean, c'mon! Am I being too nosy for wanting an answer that she promised to give?"

"No, I get you, bro," Mabel said as she put a hand on his shoulder, trying to coax him into calming down a bit. "I'm concerned about her too and I wanna know what's been making her so... _bleh_. But at the same time, Melody's right. We can't keep bugging her about it when she's already as hurt as she is. Whatever she's going through right now, we need to just respect her enough to let her deal with it until she's ready to open up about it."

"I know, I know," Dipper admitted with a sigh. "I just wish we knew more about it. Not to be nosy, but just to understand."

Mabel thought for a moment. "Maybe we can find out how she got expelled from her other friends like Robbie, Lee, and the others! I mean, we already know they're still in town, so they probably all went to the same college! And if so, then they  _must_ know what went down that day!"

"Huh...you're right!" Dipper agreed. "Those are her childhood friends. They  _gotta_ know what had happened."

"Exactly!" Mabel nodded enthusiastically as she began pulling him along with her in a direction out of the lot. "C'mon, bro-bro! Looks like we're taking a trip to the cemetery!"

"You think they still hang out there?" Dipper wondered as he followed along.

"Their personalities are still pretty dead after all this time, so probably!"

* * *

Inside the Shack, Stan and Abuelita sat in the living room in their own chairs in front of the TV, watching an ongoing Spanish soap opera.

Abuelita sat calmly invested in what was happening on screen. Stan, on the other hand, had the strong urge to rip his ears off. He tried to remain relaxed in his chair, but he couldn't help but grow more and more annoyed as time went on. Being forced to remain in the same room with her and sit through several episodes of such an irritating soap opera.

They weren't even talking over it. She wanted to just watch it without any disturbance. Any time he'd try to start a conversation to lighten up the mood, she'd shush him and tell him to be quiet. At least when watching Mabel's terrible cartoon movies as a kid, he could freely talk about how awful it was and get some enjoyment out of her comebacks. But with Abuelita, he felt totally helpless. Like he was a cat stuck in her grasp and he couldn't do anything to get away.

"Abuelita, please! We saw this episode last time Ford made you watch over me!" Stan told her. "Can't we change the channel and watch something else?"

Abuelita glanced over at him casually, before her eyes drew back to the screen. "No."

Stan sighed hopelessly. He knew he had grown tired of doing nothing for several days straight, but he would honestly prefer doing absolutely nothing instead of watching the soap opera.

Eventually, he heard the front door suddenly barge open, which immediately grabbed his attention. Turning to the side, he spotted an angry Wendy stomp her way into the kitchen, not even noticing him or Abuelita in the living room. He heard the water of the kitchen faucet begin to run simultaneously with the sound of her frustratedly muttering to herself.

"Oh, I love this part," Abuelita said as she continued to watch the show, appearing as though she had paid no notice to Wendy entering the house. She leaned forward in her seat a bit as if her investment in the current episode had just increased.

Stan glanced between her and the kitchen, where Wendy was. Eventually, he just decided to take it as a moment to step away for a bit. He got up from his chair and gestured over to the kitchen with his finger.

"I'm just gonna get a snack then…" Stan told her with an innocent smile. "Surely, you trust me enough to do that on my own, right?"

"Mhm, yes, good," Abuelita mindlessly nodded, her investment in the soap opera too great for her to be paying much attention to Stan at that moment.

Realizing her distraction, Stan jumped on his chance to get out and walked away from the living room, stepping into the kitchen. There, he saw Wendy at the sink, splashing water on her face, unaware of Stan's entrance. She closed the water, and grabbed a few sheets of paper towels, wiping her face dry. She then sighed as she stood in place, staring out the window ahead.

"Dammit, dad! Why do you have to be so hard on me all the time?" she ranted aloud. "I end up looking like a fool in front of my own friends because of him..."

"Yep, that's what dads do," Stan remarked from behind, startling her.

"Mr. Pines?!" Wendy asked as she turned around, eyes narrowing at him. "What the hell is your problem?!"

"Woah! What problem? I didn't do nothin'!" Stan said, holding his arms up defensively.

"You just barged in while I'm talking to myself!"

"Well, sorry for  _living here!_ "

Wendy paused for a moment before realizing her lack of judgment, to which she promptly facepalmed herself. "Ugh...sorry, I forgot about that. Still haven't entirely readjusted from the four years you were gone…"

"Not the only thing that needs readjusting," Stan remarked as he walked over to the fridge and opened it up. "You wanna work on that touchy attitude of yours while you're at it?"

"What? I don't have a touchy attitude," Wendy replied as she crossed her arms.

"Trust me, kid. I heard you muttering from the living room while the sink was running and the TV was playing," Stan claimed as he grabbed a Pitt Cola can and cracked it open. "That should go as a testament for just how touchy you are if you're that easy to hear over all that noise."

"Ugh…" Wendy groaned frustratedly as she turned away from him, gripping her hands on the edge of the counter

"What's up with you, kid?" Stan asked, raising an eyebrow. "I heard you got that move coming up soon. Is that what's been bugging you?"

"I wish it was just the move," Wendy said with an eye roll. "My dad's been giving me more stress than anything else, really. He hasn't been easy on me since I got expelled from college, but the closer I get to this move, the harder it's been dealing with him."

Stan's eyes bulged. "Woah...you were  _expelled?_  I never heard about  _that_  part. How the hell did that happen?"

She sighed. "I'd rather not talk about it right now. I'm already bummed enough as it is."

"I see," Stan said as he leaned back against a wall. "A stressful pops, huh? I can relate. When it came between me and my nerd of a brother, my dad always found a way to praise him and everything he does while giving me the other end of the stick."

"Oh, don't even get me started on how much  _my dad_  loves putting my little brothers on a pedestal!" Wendy claimed, growing heated due to her own relatability. "Whether it's camping, fishing, apocalypse training, or whatever activity my family does, he always says what I'm doing is wrong! 'That's not how you start a fire!' 'That's not how you make a tent!' 'That's not how you hunt a bear!' Yet, all of my brothers get all the praised for doing the exact same thing in the most outlandish ways! But, nope! I get yelled at because I'm the one always looking for…"

"...the easy way," Stan finished for her.

"...the easy way…" Wendy said simultaneously. She glanced over at him in shock that he knew what she was talking about. "You know?"

"Are you kidding? My pop always used to bust my ass about me looking for 'the easy way!'" Stan told her. "I mean, most of my stress from high school was simply trying to graduate just so I wouldn't make the man even angrier!"

"That reminds me: just this year, my oldest younger brother, Marcus, graduated high school," she began to explain. "And of course, my dad builds a whole new wooden shelf just for the boys and their life achievements. Meanwhile, my diploma and the rest of my awards are hanging inside an old wooden shelf that already houses all of my dad's lumberjacking awards. Like, why can't I have my own or at least share the new one? Why do my accomplishments have to lie in the shadows of my dad's stuff?"

"Oh, I could go on all day about how much my dad put my brother's accomplishments ahead of my own," Stan said. He then smiled. "Ya know, I can't believe I never knew how much we had in common about this sorta stuff. Given the kinda crazy things I know you do with your friends, you pretty much remind me of myself when I was your age. Slick and savage."

"Guess that's one way of putting it," Wendy said as she leaned against the counter before looking down dejectedly. "Nowadays, though, there hasn't been as much 'savage' from me because of this whole deal. There've been times where I had to skip out on doing crazy things with my friends in favor of trying to be more 'responsible', I guess. Like what I'm supposed to learn from all of this is that I have to put away all these old habits now that I'm growing up to prevent stupid mistakes, like getting expelled again."

Stan took a sip of his soda. "Well, you don't  _have_ to. I mean, look at me. I'm as old as I am and I just got back from spending four years doing illegal things around the whole world! I've grown old, but I haven't really grown  _up_. I still do whatever I please without anyone telling me what to do!"

" _Stan! You've been in the kitchen for quite some time now!_ " Abuelita called out to him from the living room. " _The next episode starts in a minute! If you aren't here by then, I'm going to have to call your hermano!_ "

Wendy glanced over at Stan and smirked. "So much for not being told what to do, huh?"

Stan promptly jumped in front of Wendy with pleading eyes. "You gotta help me, Wendy! Because of this whole thing with me and Bill sharing a body, Ford's been keeping me from leaving the house! As much as I love doing nothing, I've gotten sick of doing it for several days straight! And the only thing worse than doing nothing is being forced to sit through hours of soap operas with Abuelita! On top of that, I'm starving! Soos doesn't have any food and I've never even  _heard_  of the food Abuelita's offered me! I don't know what a yucca is, but it does  _NOT_ sound appetizing!" He desperately grabbed onto her shoulders. "You gotta bail me out of here! PLEASE!"

"What?" Wendy asked, pulling away from his grasp. "Why do you need  _my_ help? Just walk out the front door!"

"I can't leave on my own! She'll call Ford and he'll throw a hissy fit and then I'll never hear the end of it," Stan told her. "You're pretty much an adult now and Abuelita knows you, so she'll trust you to take me out of here!"

"And what makes you think that I'm going to agree to that?"

"What?! Are you kidding me?!" he asked, baffled by her lack of willingness to help. "I thought we just had a personal connection here! An eye-to-eye moment on our dads! Yet, that's  _still_ not enough for you?!"

Wendy sighed, knowing that turning her back on the moment they shared a second ago wouldn't be anything other than ill-mannered. " _Fine_. I'll help," she settled, which prompted a smile out of Stan. "But  _I'm_  driving. I know about that car crash that you and Ford got into when Bill took over. I'm not taking those chances with you."

"Understandable," he said with an eye roll.

"So, how do you want me to do this?"

"Just tell her that...uh...we're going out to get more snacks from the supermarket or something," he suggested.

"Alright," Wendy accepted as she made her way out the kitchen doorway with Stan following behind. They took a few steps into the living room toward Abuelita, whose eyes were still focused on the TV screen. "Hey Abuelita, I just found out that Stan's run out of clean Grampers and he needs to go to the store to get some more."

"Wait, WHAT?!" Stan's eyes bulged.

"You see? He's getting cranky already," Wendy said as she gestured over to him. "Anyway, you want me to take him off your hands for a second so we can go out and handle that?"

Abuelita still hadn't looked away from the screen since they entered. But she appeared to have half-mindedly processed what she had told them and lifted her hand up a bit and brushed them away, gesturing for them to go on. "Yes, yes. Go. Do what you must."

"Sweet! Thanks, Abuelita!" Wendy nodded as she turned around and started making her way toward the front door next to Stan. She opened the door for him as she looked up and saw he was giving her an unpleasant glare. "What? You said 'or something.'"

"If I was still your boss, I'd fire you," Stan told her bitterly as he walked out the door.

" _Pfft_. Fine by me. I'm leaving next week anyway."

* * *

Dipper and Mabel walked through the front gate of the town cemetery. Not a place either of them had frequented four years ago, but from what they remembered, it didn't appear as though it had changed very much since then.

Then again, what could one really expect to change from a cemetery?

"Ah, the cemetery!" Mabel said reminiscently as she looked around. "Home of some of the fondest summer memories! And dead people too!"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure their families don't look back on this place very fondly," Dipper claimed, going off her comment. "Anyways, we need to find Wendy's friends. I just hope they're actually around here somewhere..."

" _God, you are so damn needy_!" shouted the familiar voice of Tambry nearby.

" _Says the girl who needs validation for every selfie she takes before posting them!_ " replied the voice of the even more familiar voice of Robbie from the same vicinity.

"I think it's safe to be hopeful," Mabel said with a smile as she looked at Dipper.

Tambry, Robbie, Lee, and Nate laid in the grass along a hill next to a set of stairs leading up to the mausoleum. Lee and Nate sat further to the side as Tambry and Robbie argued.

"I just don't understand why whenever I say we should do something, you blow me off. Then when we do nothing, you start moping on social media about how lonely you are!" Tambry complained to him. "Like, what exactly do you  _want_ from me? Because I'm actually trying here!"

"Trying? The reason I blow you off is because you never come up with anything good that we  _both_  can enjoy!" Robbie argued. "Right, because I'd  _TOTALLY_ love to go get pedicures from the place you get all your cheap nails done."

Tambry let out an offended gasp. " _You take that back!_ "

Lee glanced over at Nate with a look of annoyance. "Time check?"

Nate looked down at his wristwatch. "Half an hour since we got here. Twenty-five minutes since they began."

Lee groaned as he dragged a hand over his face irritatedly. " _THIS_  is why I'm never getting married."

At that moment, Dipper and Mabel had climbed up enough stairs to reach the level the group sat on the hill.

"Hey fellas!" Mabel happily greeted as she and Dipper approached them.

Nate smiled as he spotted the twins, thankful that there were people to actually talk to instead of listening to another round of Robbie and Tambry's arguing. "Ayy! Mabel! Dipper!"

"Finally!  _Interesting_  people!" Lee shouted, sharing Nate's same thankfulness.

"What're you two doing here?" Nate asked as the twins approached.

"We were in the area, ya know?" Dipper casually replied, not wanting to reveal the real reason for their presence.

"Yep! Just getting our daily dose of dead body watching!" Mabel added.

"Alright, taking it a bit far there…" Dipper claimed, pushed a little by Mabel's over-the-top back up to his reply.

"Normally, that'd weird me out, but we've been listening to  _these two_  arguing for a while now and so I can honestly take anything else at this point," Lee said as he gestured over to Robbie and Tambry, who paid no mind to them or the twins as they argued.

"Arguing?" Mabel questioned, raising an eyebrow. "About what?"

"Who knows?!" Nate asked as he placed his hands on his head. "It happens everyday and it's always about something so ridiculous and petty! Lee and I just try our hardest to tune it out whenever we hang out."

"That sounds like an unhealthy relationship…" Dipper claimed.

"Their problem. Not ours," Lee replied carelessly.

Mabel, however, was disappointed to learn the two have been fighting so much, considering she was the catalyst for getting their relationship rolling in the first place. Regardless of its initial legitimacy or not. "But they've been dating for four years! I get that couples fight and stuff, but if this is a regular thing, we should be the ones to try and help them work things out!"

"Mabel...maybe this is a problem for another day?" Dipper privately suggested to her as he put a hand on her shoulder. "We didn't really come here for this…"

"But…" she began before stopping herself as she looked him in the eye and realized he had a point. Despite how much she personally wanted to help mend Robbie and Tambry's relationship issues, that wasn't the point of their current encounter. "Yeah, okay…"

"Anyway, Robbie and Tambry's relationship issues aside, what's new?" Dipper asked Lee and Nate, attempting to set down the tracks leading to the topic he was aiming for.

"Nothing much, honestly," Lee replied. "Been mostly the same old stuff with us."

"Well, except for what's going on with Wendy…" Nate brought up before putting on a sorrowful expression.

Dipper's eyes bulged at how quickly they managed to actually reach the topic without him having to lead into it himself. "Right...she's leaving in a week."

"Yeah, it sucks so much," Lee said as he shook his head sadly. "Her getting kicked out of school and all."

"I still feel so bad for what happened," Nate nodded. "To think it could've been avoided had things gone to plan."

"Avoided?" Dipper questioned.

"Gone to plan?" Mabel also questioned.

"What do you mean?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Wait, she didn't tell you guys what happened that night at the school?" Lee asked.

Dipper shook his head. "We literally just figured out about Wendy's move and stuff this past weekend. She's hardly given us any details since."

"Yeah, so what happened that night at the school?" Mabel asked.

Nate glanced over at Lee for a moment before looking back at the twins and sighing. "Our math professor, Mr. Higgins, is, like, the biggest jerk in the world."

"Whole school hates the guy," Lee added. "I don't think he's ever given anyone an A in his life."

"Yeah. So, one day, we got tired of his crap and decided we were going to get back at him," Nate continued.

"The four of us, along with Wendy and Thompson, snuck into the college late at night and into his classroom and began vandalizing his stuff anyway we could. Spray painting the walls, breaking desks...you name it."

"We did what we came to do. But where things went wrong was during the getaway…" Nate started to get into.

"Turns out there was security watching the campus and they found out about us in the school and started looking for us," Lee continued.

"While they searched, Wendy came up with the idea of hopping the fence and going into the woods. What went wrong? Everyone made it over... _except Wendy_."

"What?" Dipper questioned, eyes bulging in near-disbelief of what he was hearing.

"Yeah, she was the last one behind us," Lee nodded. "Apparently, she got caught on the fence while climbing over and security was able to catch her."

"The worst thing about it all was that  _she took responsibility_  for the whole thing to save our asses," Nate revealed before shaking his head remorsefully. "We got away clean and she took the expulsion for all of us. I've never felt more guilty before in my life."

Dipper was so confused. " _W-wha_... how'd she get caught on the fence?"

"I don't know. The four of us didn't see any of it," Nate admitted. "It was actually Thompson who was the farthest behind. He's the one who told us what happened."

"You mean, you four  _left her behind?!_ " Dipper asked as he started to grow angry at the realization.

"What?! No!" Lee denied, shaking his head aggressively. "We didn't know they were still back by the fence! We were already making our own getaways through the woods! Why would we stay behind to watch when we're  _all_  being chased down?"

"Maybe because you guys are supposed to be friends? Because you're supposed to work and stick together?" Dipper challenged angrily. "Seriously, instead of staying to help anyone in case something went wrong, you all played every man for himself and just booked it!"

"Think about what you're saying, man," Nate urged him with narrowed eyes. "You mean that if you and a bunch of friends were running from the cops, you  _wouldn't_  just fend for yourself?"

"If they were  _really_ my friends, then no! I wouldn't!" Dipper assured as he walked up to him threateningly, which prompted shocked and almost intimidated looks from both him and Lee. "All of you agreed to this together! You were  _all_ involved, yet  _none of you_  were even there to see what happened yourselves! You had to get your information from the one guy who actually cared enough, who ironically, isn't even here with you guys right now! You all act so guilty about Wendy taking the blame, but the truth is, you've never felt safer since you weren't expelled either!  _She_  took the bullet for all of you! Now,  _she_  has to deal with the stress of moving away!"

Nate and Lee remained silent throughout Dipper's rant, processing every criticism of them that he made. Soon enough, their faces looked even guiltier than they did prior as if there was some actual bite that came out of what he had told them.

"Dipper…" Mabel said, somewhat unsettled by his tone. She reached out for him slowly in an attempt to get him to calm down.

"You call yourselves  _friends?_  Well, some friends  _you are!_ " Dipper continued angrily pressing, dismissing Mabel's attempt at coaxing. "Hell, Robbie and Tambry are still just arguing! They aren't even paying attention to any of this!"

The sudden mention of Robbie and Tambry's names aloud was what finally got them to break from their arguing to look up at the four.

Robbie raised an eyebrow. "Wait, what? Who said my name?" He finally noticed Dipper and Mabel's presence. "And where did you two come from?"

"My point exactly!" Dipper said as he gestured toward Robbie once again, leaving him and Tambry in utter states of confusion. He then proceeded to walk back toward the concrete stairs, starting to head back down. "C'mon, Mabel. Let's get out of here."

Mabel looked at him as he walked down before looking back at the other four, who sat staring at them with mixed expressions. She didn't have anything else to say or add, however, and simply proceeded to follow her brother back down the stairs with her own mixed feelings.

As the twins left, Tambry continued to wonder what they were conversing about that involved bringing herself and Robbie up. She proceeded to narrow her eyes frustratedly at him. "Great! We didn't even hear what they were talking about! It's all your fault!"

"Why?! It's just as much your fault for not listening as it is mine!" Robbie asked irritatedly.

"I hate everything," Lee said simply as he and Nate immediately displayed their former looks of annoyance in response to the couple's next starting argument.

* * *

Stan stood in line at Tons grocery store, having been driven there by Wendy to go and pick up more groceries for the Shack. He had already placed a variety of different food items onto the checkout counter conveyor belt. As the customer in front of him completed their checkout, he moved up ahead to face the cashier, Richard Dalton, at the register.

Dalton scanned through all the items quickly, bagging them as he went along. As he finished, he totaled the cost on the register. "Alrighty there, mister. Your total is $45.95."

Stan dove a hand into his pocket, checking around for money. However, after a quick feel around, he pulled the bottom of his pocket out only to find he was completely empty at that moment.

" _Uh oh._ "

"Something wrong there, mister?" Dalton asked him, raising an eyebrow.

"Uh, of course not!" Stan denied with a nervous smile. "I'm just getting that money for ya!" He dove into his jacket and pretended to search around. "I think my wallet is somewhere around here! Oh, here it is!"

At that moment, Stan quickly pulled out and threw down a smoke bomb, setting off a giant cloud of smoke in his position. As Dalton inhaled and coughed through the dissipating smoke, Stan grabbed his bags of groceries and quickly made a break for it.

As the smoke cleared up, Dalton's eyes glanced over at Stan as he ran off. He sighed helplessly. "Welp, there goes another one."

"What just happened?" Sheriff Blubs asked as he and Deputy Durland walked up as the next customers in Dalton's checkout line.

"Oh, the usual. Another shoplifter," Dalton casually told them. "I'm used to it at this point. Same with security. Nothing an old folk like me can do about it."

"Oh, you poor man," Blubs replied sympathetically.

"If only there were a pair of cops around here to do something about it," Durland claimed absentmindedly as he gave Dalton his own look of sympathy.

"Yeah, if only there were…" Blubs began, only for his eyes to bulge as he made a sudden realization. "Hey, wait a minute!  _We're_ a pair of cops!"

"Oh, right!" Durland nodded as he realized the same thing. "What are we doing? Let's get that fool!"

The two quickly went into serious-policeman-mode and began running after Stan, with Dalton casually watching them go from his spot at the register. As the two ran out the market doors, they glanced around the large parking lot for Stan. Eventually, they spotted him running through one of the open sections.

Blubs narrowed his eyes as he began running again in his direction. "Hey! You stop right there, mister!"

Stan looked over his shoulder as he ran, quickly spotting the two running after him. "Oh no!" he shouted before turning back ahead of him. He looked over at Wendy's parking car across the parking lot. " _WENNNNNDYYYYY!_ "

Inside the parked car, Wendy laid back in her car seat with her eyes closed as some mellow rock played through her car stereo. While Stan's voice wasn't entirely inaudible, it wasn't loud enough to grab her attention at that moment.

" _WENNNNNNNNDYYYYYY!_ "

His second call for her, however,  _was_  loud enough. Her eyes popped open and she looked up. She then glanced to the side and out her window, soon spotting Stan running back toward her with a panicked look as Blubs and Durland chased him. Her eyes bulged in surprise as she processed this.

As he reached her car, he ran around and opened up the passenger seat door beside her, jumping inside. Wendy looked down at him as he scrambled in his seat.

"What did you do?!" she asked, growing panicked as she looked back up through the window to see how close Blubs and Durland were getting.

"Simple: I went to buy groceries and didn't have enough money. So, I decided to improvise a little!" Stan quickly summed up.

"You shoplifted?!" Wendy asked irritatedly. Not that she thought it wasn't like him, because she knew it was, but the fact that he was dragging her into his crime by getting into her car with shoplifted groceries was what she found appalling.

"Yell at me later!" Stan told her as she threw the groceries into the back seat and shut the passenger door. "Just drive!"

Wendy gripped the wheel hesitantly. "But, Mr. Pines…!"

"Just  _DRIVE_ , kid!" Stan commanded as he looked up at how much closer Blubs and Durland were getting. "We need to get the hell outta here!"

Wendy froze at that moment, as Stan's words unintentionally prompted a familiar recollection in her mind as she stared forward.

* * *

_Robbie was the first one ahead. Following behind him was Tambry, then Lee, then Nate, and a little farther behind, Thompson, who ran right ahead of her._

_She glanced back over her shoulder for a quick moment, checking to see if they were being chased only to find no one just yet. She then looked ahead again._

" _Keep running, guys! We need to get the hell out of here!"_

* * *

"C'MON, KID!"

Stan's voice prompted Wendy to snap out of it. She shook her head quickly before analyzing their current position and surroundings. Then, she placed a hand on the gear stick and placed the car in reverse before stomping on the gas, causing them to violently back out of the parking space.

As soon as they were out and had enough room, she braked and put the car in drive. She stomped on the gas again as she turned out of the lot in a direction away from Blubs and Durland. The two policeman stopped running as they saw the two drive off onto the main road.

"Dang it! They got away!" Durland shouted angrily.

"Oh, we ain't gonna let them get away that easily!" Blubs assured him as he pointed toward their parked police car in the same lot. "C'mon, let's get after them!"

The two quickly ran over toward their car and got inside. Blubs started it up and speedily drove out of the lot. It took a moment, but eventually, they found themselves driving out onto the main road where Wendy and Stan had already gotten onto. Blubs turned on the sirens and the lights as they quickly caught up behind the two.

Wendy focused her eyes on the road ahead, her grip on the wheel tight as can be under her current level of stress. Stan looked over at the rearview mirror and caught sight of the police car and it's flashing lights.

"Aw, seriously? They're  _still_  chasing us?!" Stan realized as he spotted at them. "It was just forty-six bucks! They ain't gonna get a raise from stopping me!"

"What am I supposed to do?" Wendy asked, unsure how they're supposed to escape their current situation.

"Just keep driving!" Stan replied.

"For how long?"

"Until we lose them!"

"How long will  _that_  take?!"

"I don't know! Hopefully not long!" Stan answered somewhat impatiently. "Yeesh, kid! You're asking way too many questions about this!"

"Mr. Pines, I'm not a getaway driver! I don't know what I'm doing!" Wendy told him.

"Have you ever run from the cops before?"

Wendy hesitated to answer for a moment. "Yeah…?"

"Then you're just doing that, but in a car!" he replied. "It's not rocket science, kid! Just try to lose 'em!"

Wendy thought for a moment, processing what she was told. As she looked at the road ahead, she had an idea.

"Alright."

As they came across an intersection in the road, she took a very sharp turn to the right without slowing down their speed, leaving tire marks as they screeched along. Stan was thrown to the side, not anticipating the sudden turn. As he looked ahead, he realized that there wasn't much of the road left and that they appeared to be driving in the direction of the open forest, which made his heart sink.

"WOAH! WENDY! WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU-?!"

"HANG ON!" she cut off, just before stepping on the gas even harder.

Stan gripped his seat tightly with his hands as she sped up. " _AHHHHHHHHH!_ "

The car drove down a slump, the tires bouncing up and down violently through the natural terrain as it dropped. Wendy swerved the wheel left and right around incoming trees as she approached them, attempting to navigate through the forest as cleanly as she possibly could as Stan held on for his life right beside her.

Blubs and Durland took the same turn Wendy had taken at the intersection that led them toward the forest. As they reached the end of the road, Blubs parked the car and the two got out. However, as they glanced around at the supposed dead end, they found themselves unable to spot where the two had gone.

"Where'd they go?" Blubs asked as he looked around, growing frustrated at the fact they may have lost track of them. "God dang it! Don't tell me we lost them!"

"Will it make you happier if I didn't?" Durland asked as he walked over beside Blubs.

"Actually, it  _would_  make me happier," Blubs admitted.

"Then I promise that I won't tell ya then," Durland said as he put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Blubs smiled warmly at him as he placed his own hand on his. "You're a gift that I don't deserve, Durly," he told him, which promted a warm smile in return.

* * *

" _AHHHHHHHHHHH!_ " Stan yelled fearfully as Wendy continued to drive them through the forest.

Every turn they made around an incoming tree, bush, or other natural obstacle was violent enough to jerk him around the car. Granted, he wasn't wearing his seatbelt either, which made the turns even more aggressive for him. Still, he held on tightly to the grab handle above him, ensuring that he wouldn't go flying through the windshield or worse.

"Remember earlier when you said you wanted to drive because a demon made me drive off a cliff?" Stan brought up from earlier that day. "Well, how exactly does that compare to you driving us through a  _god damn forest!_ "

"Hey, at least I'm not  _trying_  to kill us!" Wendy defended as she tried to focus on getting through the forest.

"I'm not sure that makes me feel any safer!" Stan claimed.

"Then I suggest you hang on!"

At that moment, Wendy picked up her speed a bit more as a clearing came up. Right ahead, there was a dirt slope that led into an open lot. She quickly drove the car up the dirt, the speed giving the car a bit of airtime.

"AHHHHHH!" the two screamed as the car flew upward for a moment.

The car bounced up as it touched the ground. At the same time, Wendy put full force on the brakes, which allowed the car to come to a quick and sudden stop. As the car was braked, Wendy put her hand on the gear stick and put the car in park so she could relax her feet from the pedals. Finally parked, the two began breathing heavily and rapidly as they laid back in their seats. Seeing how it seemed they had lost the cops, they began to slowly relax.

They began to slowly process everything that had just happened. Oddly enough, the two began to chuckle lightly. Their chuckling continued for a bit, growing into more of a laugh after a good moment. Eventually, the laughing turned hysteric and nearly maniacal. The two had gone from a state of stress and anxiety to a state of exhilaration and astonishment from what they had just gone through.

"THAT WAS AMAZING!" Stan shouted.

"THAT WAS AWESOME!" Wendy shouted at the same time.

"So you agree?!" Stan questioned her.

"HELL YEAH!" Wendy enthusiastically confirmed, nodding her head rapidly. "I haven't had an adrenaline rush like that in ages! I loved that! I  _needed_  that! This is the type of action I've been missing!"

"Well, you certainly impressed me, kid!" Stan told her. "I've had my past of thievery and the few getaway drivers I've had to aid me during those times don't compare to what I just saw from you!"

"R-really?" Wendy asked, cracking a slight smile at his appraisal of her.

"Are you kidding? If you were around to help me back in the day, we could've been unstoppable!" Stan said as he put a hand on her shoulder and gestured forward with his hand as if he was painting a picture. "I could see it now:  _Stan Pines and Wendy Corduroy: the most unstoppable robbers of America!_  You got a knack for this type of thing, kid! I'm telling you! We should do this again and hit a bunch of other stores in town!"

"But, Mr. Pines...I already told you that I'm not a getaway driver," Wendy reminded him again, now starting to grow hesitant of his ideas. "Also, I wouldn't really say I have a knack for this if this was the first time I've ever been a getaway. I kind of just got lucky."

"Lucky? That wasn't lucky, kid!" Stan told her. "That was a smart, split-second opportunity and you took it! And as you can see, it paid off! If you just repeat what you did today after we hit a bunch of other stores, who knows what we could accomplish?"

"I...I don't know," she continued to hesitate. "This sounds like a bad idea. I'm already in a bunch of trouble with my dad as it is. If he found out about any of this, he might...I don't know... _disown_  me."

Stan looked at her for a moment before looking down somewhat empathetically. "Yeah, and I know how that feels…I guess it's your choice in the end," he admitted before looking back at her hopefully. "But just know that I definitely saw something in you today, Wendy. Something I didn't know you had. And something that I think you can really master and do amazing things with if you put in the time. That's what I saw. That's what I  _believe_."

Wendy couldn't believe how much confidence Stan was putting into the idea of her becoming a pro getaway driver. When it came to driving her own dad around, she had to deal with constant nagging whenever she made any little mistake on the road. Yet, she had just driven in one of the craziest ways she had ever driven in her whole life and she was getting  _praised_ for it by her former boss.

And while she was hesitant on the criminal image associated with becoming a getaway driver, she had to admit that what she had just done made her feel the freest she had been since her expulsion. A feeling that she had been missing for the longest time. The feeling of rebellion and doing what she wanted, seemingly without consequence.

It felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders and it was definitely a feeling that she didn't want to go away so soon.

But would it really benefit her? Would she gain anything from doing this besides making things worse between herself and her dad? Was becoming a potential criminal really worth it?

Those were things she wondered that held her back from being able to really decide. But the decision became easier as her rebellious side began to take mental priority after being given a small taste of what it clearly wanted more of. Risk was still a fear, but it was starting to mean less to her.

Still, she looked over at Stan and smiled. "Alright. I think I'll give it a shot…"

"Yes! Now we're talking!" Stan shouted excitedly as he raised his hand up to her, which she promptly high-fived. "Now come on, kid. We have history to make…"

 

 


	34. Little Red Riding: Part 2

After their confrontation with Wendy's friends at the cemetery, Dipper and Mabel decided to make their way over to Thompson's house.

He was the only one who wasn't present at the cemetery that also had involvement in what happened at the college the night Wendy was expelled. And apparently, he knew what happened the most. Considering the fact that Robbie, Tambry, Lee, and Nate all went out to hide from the police instead of looking out for one another, it sounded as though Thompson was the only one who cared enough to stay behind.

Of course, neither of them knew that exactly either. However, Dipper had a good idea that that was the case when he considered Thompson's crush on Wendy, which he had learned about at the Mystery Shack party the previous weekend. For years, he had been the punching bag of their friend group, but he cared enough to spend time getting into shape and cleaning himself up to appeal more to her. Despite this, his good-natured attempts still ended in failure to some extent, such as getting Wendy flowers that she was actually allergic too.

Dipper felt for Thompson, as he had his own share of shortcomings when it came to his former crush on Wendy. Though, the difference was those shortcomings came during the span of a single summer, whereas his spanned since the fifth grade. Now, he's past his first year of college and still can't catch a break. Looking back at how angry he had gotten when he thought Wendy had fallen for him, he couldn't say he didn't understand his frustration.

All this in mind, Dipper expected he would know the best about Wendy's situation and what had happened that night. The basic summary that Lee and Nate had given didn't seem to provide enough insight as to what really went on.

Sure, it was a prank gone wrong, but it still felt there was a piece of the puzzle missing. A detail left out that would explain more why this event was so difficult for Wendy to talk about. If it was as simple as a prank gone wrong, then why wouldn't she have just said so in the first place? What made it such a sensitive topic for her?

That was what he hoped Thompson would be able to tell. Though, Mabel didn't quite understand how he'd be any more help than the rest of Wendy's friends.

"You sure about this, Dipper?" she asked as they began to approach Thompson's front door. "I mean, not that I don't like Thompson or anything, but if he's anything like the way I remember him four years ago, I can't say I see how he might be able to help."

"Well, I have a good feeling that he will," Dipper assured her just as he stepped up to the door.

He knocked a few times and backed away as they awaited an answer. After a moment, they heard the sound of the door unlocking before it opened up. There, a middle-aged woman, presumably Thompson's mother, stood before them.

She analyzed them for a moment. "Friends of Thaliard?"

Dipper and Mabel glanced at one another for a moment. Dipper then looked back at the woman. "Uh...?"

"No, we're looking for  _Thompson_ ," Mabel cleared up.

"Read the mailbox, sweetie," the woman told her, pointing out the mailbox with name 'Thompson' on it. "We're all Thompsons here."

Mabel stared at the mailbox for a moment. "Oh…"

"Anyway, I'm just gonna assume you two are here for Thaliard," she said before turning back inside. " _THALLY! YOUR FRIENDS ARE HERE TO MAKE SURE YOU'RE NOT DEAD!_ "

" _Tell them not today, mom!_ " Thompson's voice called back.

" _NO! YOU NEED THE COMPANY!_ " she yelled back. " _YOU HAVEN'T LEFT THAT ROOM OF YOURS ALL WEEK!_ "

" _Mommmm!_ "

" _I'M NOT GOING TO ARGUE, THALLY!_ "

" _Ugggghhhh!_ "

Mrs. Thompson then turned back to the twins. "Come inside."

Dipper and Mabel quietly accepted her invite and stepped into the house, both of them processing the fact that Thompson's real name was Thaliard. Looking around the house, they saw that it appeared fairly normal, though there looked to be some dirty clothes laying around the floor and furniture, which immediately gave off the impression that the family generally wasn't that clean.

"Thally's in his room," Mrs. Thompson told the two as she walked out of the room, gesturing down a hallway she passed as she made her way into the kitchen. Dipper and Mabel looked at one another again before making their way down the hallway of notice.

As they walked down the hall, the scent of pizza began to strengthen. Eventually, they reached an open door at the end of the hall. Popping their heads inside, they were greeted by a dark and messy room.

The blinds were closed and the curtains were shut. Throughout the room, there were a bunch of dirty, unorganized clothes, as well as empty bags of finished snacks and empty pizza boxes. On the bed, Thompson himself laid in a dirty tank top and boxers.

He looked miserable; completely beaten and depressed. His stubble also clearly hadn't been shaved or cleaned up in a while, and it added to his messy appearance. For Dipper, at least, this was a shock to see because he looked completely cleaned up at the party over the weekend. Though, he still maintained his more muscular build, which was the only real surprise for Mabel, who was only just seeing him again for the first time compared to Dipper.

"Thompson?" Dipper asked as he walked over to him on his bed, also watching the floor so he doesn't accidentally step in a slice of pizza or something else. "Thompson, man? Are you alright?"

"Huh? You two?" Thompson questioned as he looked up at him and Mabel. They weren't who he expected when his mom said that his 'friends' came over.

"Thompson! Buddy!" Mabel tried to happily greet him, but find herself growing disgusted by his mess of a room, nearly stepping in his dirty underwear. Still, she tried to suppress those feelings in favor of trying to stay positive. "Long time no see! You're looking...great!"

"Yeah, good one," Thompson said with an eye roll. "What are  _you two_  doing here?"

"We...uh...came to check on you," Dipper made up as an excuse, though he felt it wasn't the nicest excuse to come up with given Thompson's actual state.

"Why would you two assume I needed to be checked up on?" he asked. "And why would  _you_  even check on me? I don't know you guys like that!"

"Thompson, Thompson, Thompson..." Mabel shook her head. "I think you underestimate the value of all of our short-term interactions from four years ago."

"W-what…?" Thompson asked, confused. Though, he wasn't mentally active enough to really want to think over what she was talking about and just laid back down in bed dejectedly. "You know what...nevermind."

"God, what happened to you, man?" Dipper asked, raising a concerned eyebrow. "You were at the party at the Shack on Saturday and you looked great. But now…"

"...you look like you've been eating ice cream and pizza all weekend and throwing it up all over yourself," Mabel continued, which was a description that Dipper couldn't really object to.

Thompson sighed. "It's been a tough being me this past week." He sat up in bed again. "Or maybe my whole life…"

"Did you get out of a bad break up?" Mabel suggested. "I mean, ice cream and pizza is usually the first thing I turn to when  _I'm_  heartbroken."

"No, but with what's coming up, I might as well be considered dumped," Thompson replied.

Dipper knew what he was talking about. "Wendy moving soon has got you down, huh?"

Thompson stared at him for a moment before looking down sadly. "Yeah, it's been rough."

"Wait a second…you're like this is because Wendy's leaving?" Mabel asked, raising an eyebrow.

Thompson's eyes bulged nervously. "Uh, yeah! She's been a great friend for years, so, of course, I'm upset about it! It sucks, yo!"

Dipper glanced over at Mabel for a second before stepping toward Thompson. "Look, man, you don't need to hide the fact that you like Wendy."

Mabel's eyes bulged in slight surprise as she found out about this. At the same time, Thompson began to grow red-faced as he was called out.

"W-what?!" he stuttered. "Me? Liking Wendy? That's crazy, man! She's been my friend since we were kids!"

"Dude, I already know about it," Dipper told him. "I've known about it ever since the party."

Thompson's eyes bulged as he made that claim. He knew the party was weird due to finding himself waking up from a supposed sugar rush, as called by Stan Pines. But even then, he had some hyper-realistic dreams from his time passed out. Only in those dreams did he ever tell Dipper about his feelings for Wendy, and that was in a confrontational stance with him. Despite the fact that it was called out as a dream, he could never get over how real it seemed. So Dipper saying that he knew about his feelings for Wendy since the party definitely set off an alarm in his head.

"H-how did  _you_  find out?" Thompson asked, eyes narrowing skeptically.

Dipper caught his skeptical glance and was only then reminded of the same circumstances behind what had happened at that party. In order to save face, he tried to think up the best excuse to prevent him from starting another potential fight over Wendy.

"Uh...I mean, it was just obvious!" Dipper nervously excused. "I saw the way you looked at her when you tried giving her those flowers! How nervous you were and stuff…"

With this explanation, Thompson retracted his skepticism and realized he made a good point. He rested his head on his hand as he sighed again, physically showing his acceptance to Dipper's call-out.

"You don't know how it feels when you've been in love with a girl for as long as I've been, only to watch that same girl jump in and out of relationships with other guys, including some that  _I knew_ ," Thompson began to vent. "I can understand why she'd never look at me like that before. I was never the most  _muscular_  or...the most  _attractive_  guy she knew. That's why I decided to finally work on myself during high school. But to put so much effort into improving myself for as long as I did only to find out she'd be moving away in a few months...it really hit hard."

"Why didn't you just ask her out when you finished fixing yourself up then?" Mabel asked.

"She just got suspended from college!" Thompson reminded her somewhat frustratedly. "You think she wants to start going out with a guy when she's got  _that_  to deal with?" He slumped forward dejectedly. "Plus...it's not that easy…I've been the punching bag of the group since we were kids. Doing things I was dared to do just to keep everyone together. No matter how much I try to change, that'll always be a part of me. And that'll always be the side she'll see of me."

Dipper and Mabel had sympathy for Thompson, but they also felt guilty. Particularly Dipper, who remembered being one who used Thompson as a said punching bag in order to propel his own status in Wendy's friend group. After his earlier talk with them, however, he could only reflect on what a mistake that was. Trying to fit in with a bunch of jerks and picking on the one person who's actually a really nice guy at heart.

 _The goals of a twelve-year-old_ , Dipper guiltily thought.  _I used to pick on a man who's been picked on all his life just to fit in and look cool…_

"To think I could've also been the one to save her from getting caught and expelled too…" Thompson said as he began to think about the incident at the school.

Dipper looked up at him. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know...I mean, do you guys even know the story?" Thompson asked.

" _Ehhh_ ," Mabel said, turning her hand neutrally.

"I mean, a general idea, I guess," Dipper added.

"We heard from Lee and Nate that she got caught on a fence?" Mabel questioned. "And that's how security got them."

"Ugh! I told them what happened, yet they can't even tell the story right!" Thompson said as he pulled on his hair angrily.

"Wait, so that wasn't true?" Dipper asked, starting to get a bit heated as well. "I knew something seemed off about that story! Wendy, of all people, wouldn't get stopped because she got caught on a fence! That just wouldn't happen to her!"

"Well, she did get caught  _on_  the fence…" Thompson clarified. "But I mean that she got caught by security. She didn't get stuck on the fence and  _then_  get caught."

"I don't see how that makes a big difference," Dipper admitted, somewhat confused on what Thompson was getting at.

"Because they didn't tell you what I  _really_  saw," Thompson told him as he focused on visualizing the event in his head. "I had just finished going over the fence. The open woods were right on the other side. And this was late at night too, so the woods were even darker. I remember everyone else had already run off ahead. I was about to follow, but I looked behind me and saw that Wendy was still climbing the fence, so I stayed back to try and make sure she made it. But then, she climbed to the top of the fence and just... _froze_."

"She...froze?" Dipper questioned, finding this explanation even odder than the idea that she simply got stuck.

"We talking scared frozen or literally turned to ice frozen?" Mabel asked, which garnered odd looks from the other two. "What? This is Gravity Falls! I gotta ask from both sides!"

"Scared frozen…" Thompson answered. "Her legs were hanging off of both sides of the fence and she just sat there completely still, looking off into the woods with this...almost  _terrified_  look on her face. Then, she asks me to look behind and tell her if I see what she sees. But, this is all in the middle of an intense escape, so I'm just confused at that point. I considered just running and pulling her leg down the other side so we could just keep running, but instead, I looked behind like she asked. And somewhere in the trees, I see some blue flash for like a second. It was really quick, but, I thought I saw someone... _watching us_  before running off. At that point, I heard Wendy yelling, and when I turned back around, she was being pulled down from the fence by security, and there was nothing I could do to help at that point."

Dipper and Mabel processed this new explanation for a moment, seeing how it only deepened the way that Lee and Nate described the incident. Instead of getting stuck on the fence, Wendy saw something shocking enough for her to freeze on top of the fence. However, evidenced by Thompson's own eyes, apparently that something was  _someone_.

"So, someone was watching you two in the woods?" Dipper asked.

"I don't know what they were doing exactly, but I do know that I saw someone," Thompson assured him.

"Could it have been one of the others? Like Robbie or Tambry or someone?" Mabel asked.

"All of them had already run off so far ahead, and even when I caught up with them, they said no one went back," Thompson claimed. "Not that I trust their word anymore, but I don't think it was any of them. Especially based on the look on Wendy's face. I don't mean she looked kinda freaked out. She looked totally  _shocked_."

"Did you ever ask her what she saw?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah, I have. Many times. But she  _never_  wants to talk about it," Thompson replied.

"Maybe  _that's_  what makes Wendy so uncomfortable about telling us about what happened," Mabel told Dipper. "Thompson already knows what happened to get her expelled. He was there. But she didn't even want to tell  _him_  what she saw."

"Maybe…" Dipper nodded at the strong possibility as he turned back to Thompson. "When did all of this happen again?"

"April 23rd," Thompson replied.

"And you have no idea at all who this person might've been?"

"Not really," Thompson said as he tried to remember. "And again, it was dark so I could barely even see them either. It just looked like they were wearing white. They just disappeared after that though. Kind of like a ghost or something."

"A ghost?" Mabel asked, raising an eyebrow.

A sudden thought entered Dipper's mind. "Wait a second...the ghost that haunted the old Northwest mansion...I remember finding out sometime later that it might've been a Corduroy. Of course, that ghost was more blue than white, but a ghost's a ghost."

"What are you thinking?" Mabel asked.

"It's just a theory, but if it  _is_  a ghost as Thompson implies, then maybe Wendy might've seen something of an ancestor or family member that might've been familiar enough to shock her," Dipper suggested.

"Why would they haunt  _Wendy_  though?" Mabel asked further.

"I don't know...but as Thompson said, it seemed more like they were just being watched," Dipper reminded her. "Perhaps a Corduroy family spectator watching their future generation without the intention of being caught or something? Though, that does beg the question of why a ghost would even reveal itself like that…"

"Who knows, man?" Thompson asked as he glumly laid back in his bed. "Whether it's some dumb ghost or some weird town stalker or whatever, it isn't gonna change the fact that she's leaving. And it won't change the fact that I could've done something to stop it, but didn't."

Mabel looked on sympathetically at Thompson for a moment before walking up to him and placing a hand on his arm, rubbing it comfortingly as she smiled at him. "It's okay, Thompson. In the end, you're a good guy and an even greater friend. You shouldn't beat yourself over this."

"Yeah, man. She's right. You  _are_  a great guy," Dipper nodded in agreement. For a moment, he hesitated to say what he said next as he considered his own background. But he figured that he had to accept how true it was, for Thompson's sake and his own. "And you know, you've known Wendy for ages and you're one of the most considerate guys I know. If anyone deserves a shot with her, it's you."

Thompson's eyes glanced over at him for a moment. He simply replied with a thankful smile, feeling unable to come up with the right words to thank him otherwise. It got the point across though, as both twins smiled back at him.

He then sighed and looked away again. "I just hope she's okay. I know that even before getting expelled, she's had issues with her family; particularly her dad. Hopefully, she's not doing anything risky or crazy enough to get her into even  _more_  trouble."

* * *

" _KEEP DRIVING, KID! WE'VE ALMOST LOST THEM!_ "

In the middle of an open town road, Wendy drove with Stan beside her as they were attempting to flee a pursuing police car. In Stan's hands was a large painting within its frame that they had presumably stolen. At the same time, the back seat of the car held a bunch of other objects and items thrown around that appeared to have also been obtained through illegal means.

Wendy skillfully drove around every corner they passed while maintaining her fast speed to assure the cops wouldn't catch up. Stan continuously looked back and forth between the view ahead and the rearview mirror. As he looked ahead again, he recognized the street they were about to pass and realized an opportunity for them to take.

"Turn right on this street coming up!" Stan commanded.

"Way ahead of you!" Wendy responded as she leaned in on the wheel, eyes focused ahead.

As they made contact with the discussed street, Wendy made a hard right as planned. As they turned, she put full force on the accelerator, picking up fast speed on the long, empty road. The pursuing police had been about ten seconds behind her prior and still hadn't pulled onto the same street yet, but she knew she had limited time before they would. So, after a moment of speedily driving down the street, she stomped on the brakes, which violently threw their bodies forward. Immediately after braking, Wendy put the car in reverse and quickly, but cautiously, backed the vehicle into a dark alleyway.

At the same time, the cop car came speeding around the corner onto the same street. However, Wendy and Stan had managed to back into the alley just in time for them not to be caught, leaving the police confused as they began to slowly drive down the street.

Soon, the car came to a stop in the middle of the street and Blubs and Durland promptly stood out and glanced around.

"DANG IT! WE LOST 'EM AGAIN!" Blubs shouted angrily, slamming his fist down on the top of the police cruiser.

"That's the eleventh time today!" Durland added.

"How do we keep letting this happen, Durly?!" Blubs asked as he put his hands over his tearful eyes out of frustration. "How we keep letting them get away? Are we getting too old for this sorta thing? Is this a job for us anymore? Maybe we should just give up…"

"Hey, hey! That's no way to talk!" Durland tried to reassure his partner as he walked over to him and moved his hands away from his face, looking at him in the eyes. "I know what'll cheer you up! How about we go out for comfort ice cream?"

The offer immediately seemed to perk Blubs up a bit, prompting him to smile as he put a hand on his shoulder. "You know me so well!"

The two cops excitedly ran back into their sides of the cruiser, slamming the doors shut as they sat down before speeding off straight down the road and past the alleyway where Wendy and Stan continued to lurk. There, they silently waited for a moment as they stared ahead, assuring that they were in the clear.

"Phew!" the two simultaneously sighed with relief as they slumped back in their car seats.

"We lost them…" Stan said as he panted exhaustedly.

"Yeah…" Wendy said as she also panted exhaustedly. "We got away…"

The two then let out one final deep breath as they finally settled down, letting a moment of silence overcome their previous panting.

" _YEEEEAAAAHHHH!_ " the two suddenly shouted jubilantly at yet another victorious escape.

"WOO! THAT WAS AWESOME!" Wendy cheered.

"YOU DID IT AGAIN, KID!" Stan praised. "Eleventh time today!"

"And I can push through eleven more if I wanted to!" Wendy confidently added.

"Damn right!" Stan nodded in agreement as he turned the stolen painting in his hands around to look at it.

"Woo! I just can't believe we actually stole  _priceless art!_ " Wendy said as she glanced over at the painting.

"Priceless? What?" Stan asked, raising a confused eyebrow. "This ain't priceless! We robbed the local Gravity Falls Museum For Cheapskates. Everything there is worthless!"

"Wait,  _what?_ " Wendy questioned, having not been advised of this detail. Prior to the robbery, Stan had only told her that they were hitting a museum, with the type being left ambiguous. Still, this was the  _last_ thing she could've expected.

"Yeah, they had this nice painting that I knew about and wanted, so it's worth something to me," Stan explained. "We ain't making a dime off this though."

" _Boring!_ " Wendy bluntly told him. "What's the point of going around stealing stuff if none of it is actually worth anything?"

"Hang on! We stole plenty of stuff that has value!" Stan reminded her as he dove a hand in the backseat, scavenging through some of the other items they had stolen through the day. "Like this antique quarter collection! Or this old, vintage watch-thing? Or Mayor Tyler's miniature Statue of Liberty made entirely of bottle caps!" His eyes bulged for a second as he looked back at the object in his hands. "Wait...why does he have this?"

"Man, if  _this_  is the type of criminal you used to be, I'm going to feel even sadder than I usually am for you," Wendy said as she shook her head disappointedly.

"Hang on. Are you trying to say I'm out of the game?" Stan asked, taking Wendy's words as an insult to his experience.

"You tried to steal a robot badger a few years ago, so yeah, I'm starting to wonder why I didn't see this coming," she admitted.

"Alright, kid...you want a  _real heist?_  Then, I'll  _give you_  a real heist!" Stan told her. "I'll  _show you_ the kind of work that Stan Pines  _REALLY_  used to get done back in the day!"

"So what're we hitting then?" Wendy asked, suddenly growing excited as she thought over their next score. "A bank? Are we going to do a local one for cash or clear an outside depository of all of their gold?"

"Yeesh, kid! Turn it down a notch, would ya?" Stan said while gesturing for her to calm down. "No, we're not doing a bank! You're not ready for that level yet! We need to do something simpler."

" _Ughhh!_ " she groaned, unsatisfied.

"Hey, I said  _simpler_. Not  _invaluable_ ," Stan pointed out. "I know a place where we can score a good take."

"Where?"

Conveniently enough, Stan looked ahead through the windshield and spotted the location of interest right ahead of them outside of the alley. He pointed it out for Wendy to look at.

"The Gravity Falls Local Jewel Store…"

Wendy's eyebrows raised interestedly. "I'm listening…"

"Now, we could clear out the whole place of their jewels and make a good million or so. But, cleaning out that joint all on my own at  _my age_  while you're just in the car waiting for me will take too long," Stan explained to her. " _However_ , that store has  _one_ thing worth more than the whole damn store: a rare, hand-crafted diamond necklace."

"Woah…" Wendy said in awe. "This town actually has something of  _value?_ "

"It's been in one little case in the back of the store for ages," Stan began to explain. "That's because it's too expensive for any of the normal townsfolk to afford. The only people that could ever afford it were the Northwests, but they were already loaded enough to have about fifty of those, so what did they care? Anyway, if we target that diamond, sell it, and split the take, you can consider most of your lifetime expenses paid."

"Maybe that'll even cover all of my college funds and student loans!" Wendy said cheerfully at the thought.

"Yeah, that is if you even decide to go through with finishing college when you're  _that_ loaded," Stan mentioned as he kicked back in his seat relaxingly.

His statement made Wendy think for a moment. "Wow...I really  _could_  drop out of college," she realized as she thought it over. "Then I could stay in Gravity Falls...but maybe that's taking things too far. I mean,  _you_ finished college, didn't you?"

"Kid, I never even finished high school."

Wendy's eyes bulged. "What?"

"My dad kicked me out during senior year, and at that point, I was already failing pretty much all of my classes," Stan explained. "With nothing to support myself, I just took to the streets on my own and started doing my own thing. Started a bunch of businesses all over the world, went to jail all over the world, but eventually, it all led me to where I am today."

"Wait, so your dad  _did_  kick you out?" Wendy brought up.

"My dad and I always had a complicated relationship," Stan shrugged at the thought, though felt a bit melancholy as he mentioned it. "Sometimes I loved him, but most of the time he made it really hard to do so."

"Huh…"

"Yeah, so that's that," Stan said as he looked forward and laid back in his seat again. "I mean, you know how it is. The stress from parents wanting you to go to college, wanting you to be successful, and so forth. But, while I might've benefitted from finishing school, I can't say that I'm not happy where I currently am. Life's not perfect, of course. But overall, if I were to die tomorrow, I'd say I'm pretty satisfied with where I ended up. A man of my own. Living in a future designed by himself instead of one his parents wanted him to design."

Wendy stared at him for a moment. "You're... _really_  happy?"

Stan looked over at her and gave a slight nod. "As can be."

It felt somewhat odd for Wendy to suddenly find out that she related so heavily to Stan. Whilst it clearly sounded like he's had it far worse than she did, it still felt like they shared similar grievances in regard to their fathers. That while she did love her dad, she was at a point of time where it felt harder to do so.

And she  _did_ love him, but she couldn't help but let her recent frustrations with him break into her mind and ruin her perception of him. And thinking of those frustrations led to her thinking of her even older troubles that she's endured from him. All the other stressful times she's suffered because of him. It all just made her want to get away.

Perhaps, Stan's influence wasn't the best for her to be accepting when she's been in such a damaged and emotionally vulnerable state of mind as of late. But she didn't care. She had just helped him get away from the cops after their eleventh consecutive robbery that day. And while the robberies themselves hadn't yet been large-scale in any sense, it didn't mean she wasn't loving the thrill of being rebellious. To her, doing bad things and getting away with them felt like the old days. The pre-college days.

Except, this time, she was doing them with someone who she felt really understood her. Who would've thought that it would be her old, crumby boss from the Mystery Shack?

Not her. Not in a thousand years.

But, she had no issue with it. Regardless of his bad influence, Stan felt like a better father figure to her at that moment than her own dad had been over the past month. If he said they were hitting a jewel store, then she was down to hit a jewel store.

"So...what're we waiting for?" she asked with a ready smile. "Let's hit a jewel store!"

"Not right this second. We're still in broad daylight," Stan reminded her. "We may have been hitting small stores, museums, markets and such, but a jewel store is different. This is a job that can't have  _ANY_ mistakes. And our best shot at that is at night."

"Tonight then?" Wendy suggested.

Stan thought for a brief moment, contemplating whether it would give them enough planning time. He shrugged. "Sure. Why not? Until then, we plan and prepare…"

* * *

A little while after visiting Thompson, Dipper and Mabel had made their way through the woods and over to the Corduroy cabin. They made their way toward the front door, stepping onto the front porch as Dipper walked ahead of Mabel, who looked somewhat confused as she looked around.

"So, what're we doing at Wendy's house again?" she asked her brother.

"Well, if we're potentially dealing with a Corduroy ghost, I feel like maybe it'd be a good idea to investigate the Corduroy family history," Dipper replied as he walked right up to the door and knocked on it three times. "It could give some insight into who we might be dealing with. Maybe, Manly Dan could provide us with some info."

Mabel gave him a reluctant look. "Dipper, I was with you in the beginning when we were just asking Wendy's friends for answers on what had happened with her expulsion, but this is starting to look like we're snooping too far into Wendy's business."

"Mabel, Wendy could be getting haunted by a ghost!" Dipper justified as he turned back to her. "Whoever she might've seen that night obviously left her in a state of shock. If this involves any case of Gravity Falls weirdness, then we need to try and do something about it! For  _her_ sake!"

"Yeah, but, is this really a good time for us to be doing so?" Mabel asked, still feeling unsure by the idea. "With what she's going through right now in her life? Wouldn't you rather just wait until she properly tells us what's going on herself? Maybe she already  _has_ an answer for all of this."

Before Dipper could give her a reply, their attention drew back toward the front door, which was promptly heard being unlocked. The two looked up and saw as the door opened and Manly Dan stood before them. He glanced back and forth between the two with his usual stern expression, obviously recognizing them as friends of Wendy.

"Ah, Mr. Corduroy!" Dipper greeted. "Uh...how are you doing this fine summer afternoon?"

"My TV wasn't working so I punched a hole in it!" Dan responded with upfront anger toward his situation. His reply left Dipper unsure how to respond and resulted in him simply staring back at him silently.

"Our Grunkle once threw our TV out the window because he couldn't find the remote," Mabel replied casually, showing no intimidation to Manly Dan's outlandish reply.

"A man with class, I see," Dan nodded at her.

"Anyway…" Dipper intervened. "We came here because we were wondering if maybe we could learn a bit of your... _background!_ "

Dan thought for a moment before looking over his shoulder at his house. He scanned it for a second before looking back at Dipper with a raised eyebrow. "It's my house."

Yet again, Dipper was caught off guard by Dan's reply and misinterpretation of what he said. "That's...not what I-"

"What Dipper is trying to say is that he wants you to talk about yourself! A lot!" Mabel cut off and cleared up for him.

"That's an incredibly odd and specific reason to come over to my house," Dan told the twins candidly. "However, I do like talking about myself…"

"Who doesn't?" Mabel asked with a smile.

"Come inside then!" Dan offered. "Also, don't mind the holes in the walls. There was a mosquito flying around earlier. I got it  _good_ though…"

He stood with a clenched fist and a vengeful look for a moment as he thought about the mosquito, to which Dipper and Mabel glanced over at one another in slight concern. However, eventually, Dan turned around and proceeded to walk back into the cabin, leaving the twins at the open front door.

" _This_ is the guy who was lecturing Wendy about being responsible yesterday?" Dipper asked themselves once Dan was out of sight.

"You know...we can still back out of this like it's none of our business…" Mabel suggested. "...Wendy would never find out that we were snooping around in her and her family's personal lives…"

"We're  _not_ snooping, Mabel!" Dipper defended. "We're just...trying to get to the bottom of a mystery here."

"Doesn't solving mysteries usually mean having to snoop around in other people's business?" Mabel asked.

"We're not snooping! Stop saying that!" Dipper demanded. "And since when did  _you_  become the snooping police, anyway? You're the one always trying to play matchmaker when no one wants you to!"

"Hey, I'm an experienced matchmaker with a reputable background!" Mabel defended. "It's family drama that I know not to snoop in!"

"You literally sit our parents down and have mock therapy sessions with them every time they have an argument," Dipper reminded her.

"That's because it's  _OUR_ family drama," Mabel said. "It's  _other people's_  family drama that I don't like getting too deeply involved in."

"Look, trust me, Mabel. If you just work with me here, we might be able to find an answer for all of this by the end of the day," Dipper pleaded her. "At that point, we can either do something about it or move on with our lives. Hopefully, it's the latter."

He then proceeded to walk into the cabin himself, leaving his reluctant sister at the door. While she still wasn't sure about the idea of getting deeply involved in Wendy's family drama, she knew her brother was too determined about figuring things out. Whether she liked it or not, she had to stick by his side, especially in case she needed to pull him out should he cross a line.

* * *

About a half hour into their visit to the Corduroy residence, the twins found themselves sitting in the living room across from Manly Dan, who stood before them as he reenacted an old story about himself to the two. As he finished the story, he sat down in his own chair and grabbed his glass of root beer from the coffee table.

"And so let that be a lesson to you kids... _NEVER_  play the knife game with an ax!" he told the twins before chugging down his root beer.

As he drank away, Dipper and Mabel sat in silence with mortified expressions as they processed Dan's story and reenactment. While it wasn't the type of story they had come for, it definitely gave a large amount of insight to his personal life. They couldn't say it was the type of insight they  _wanted_ , however.

"Anyway, yeah. That's the story," Dan said as he slammed his glass back down on the coffee table, smashing it to pieces. However, he gave no regard to his action. "I have a similar one involving losing a bet to a bear. But I'm not sure y'all are old enough to handle it." He thought for a moment. "Actually, how old are you two again?"

"Uh...why don't we just skip that story?" Dipper suggested.

"AW C'MON! It's one of my best!" Dan tried to assure him.

" _J-just for now!_ " Dipper stuttered, somewhat intimidated as he didn't want to risk angering someone as emotionally unstable as Dan was. "I mean, you already told one big and... _epic_  story. Why don't we just cut it back for a little bit and talk about some other things?"

"You came here to talk about  _ME_ and now you wanna talk about  _OTHER THINGS?!_ " Dan questioned, growing slightly irritated by Dipper's reasoning. "I don't get your deal, kid!"

"No!" Dipper shook his head frantically. "I mean, things like... _like…_ "

"Woah! Look at that!" Mabel suddenly intervened as her eyes were drawn across the room. She quickly jumped up from her seat and ran over to a set of wooden display cabinets and shelves organized behind Manly Dan's chair. Among each of the shelves were sets of various photographs of different people. Looking from left to right on the shelves, the pictures appeared to become newer and less vintage, signifying how much more recent they were. "Are these pictures of your family, Mr. Corduroy?"

As his own attention turned toward the photo gallery, Dan gave a proud smile. "Yep! That's the Corduroy family gallery. Full of centuries of Corduroy family history."

"Yeah!  _That's_ something we could talk about!" Dipper nervously claimed as he walked up to the shelves himself, hoping that Dan's attention had been completely averted from their tense exchange a moment ago.

"All of these shelves are hand-crafted by Corduroy generations," Dan explained as he ran his hand along the wood of one of the shelves. "You'll find our ancestors to the left, and closer to the right, you'll find us."

Mabel stared at each of the pictures in awe, admiring the history and legacy of the Corduroys as she went along. The Corduroys were clearly built upon family, as there seemed to be just as many family portraits as there were individual portraits. Along with photos, there were also various different awards showcasing the achievements done by different members. From various lumberjacking trophies to awards won from toughness competitions, which seemed to imply how much the manliness factor played into the family.

As Mabel continued walking right, she eventually came across the second to last shelf, which showcased most of Manly Dan's photos and awards. However, among his shelves, she spotted Wendy's photos and achievements too.

"Hey! There's Wendy's diploma!" she pointed out as she spotted it. She then let out a gasp as she saw the picture right beside it. "And her graduation photo!"

She grabbed the framed photo and looked on at it. Wendy stood in the middle of her family members in her green cap and gown, holding her diploma out to the camera. Her face showed a joyful, yet relaxed smile, which was enough of a testament to her happiness. To the twins, it felt somewhat odd to see her that way though, as she looked happier in that one picture than they had seen her since they arrived in Gravity Falls earlier that month. She looked practically stress-free, which seemed likely if the circumstances were compared.

"Aw! She looks so happy here!" Mabel acknowledged as the three looked at the photo. "With her dad, and her brothers…" As she scanned the photo, her eyes fell upon an unfamiliar old woman who stood beside Wendy. "...but who's  _that?_  Is that... _her mom?_ "

Dan's heart dropped as she made that observation. "What? No! That's not her mother! Are you insane?" he yelled as he swiped the photo away from her. "That's her aunt!"

His reaction made Mabel feel a bit guilty for her mistake. "I'm...sorry. I didn't know."

"You better be sor-" he began before cutting himself off, suddenly realizing what he was doing. He then let out a sigh from his own guilt. "No, it's fine…"

Dipper looked at Manly Dan and noticed him suddenly grow a sorrowful expression. "Mr. Corduroy, are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah…" Dan nodded sadly. "I just...it always gets to me when I'm reminded of Valora."

Dipper and Mabel glanced at one another for a moment before looking back at Manly Dan. "Valora?"

Dan sighed as he walked over to the shelf displaying his things and kneeled down to the bottom, where there was a drawer. He put his hand on the knob and pulled it open. From inside, he then pulled out a framed photo, handing it over to the twins. "My one and only wife- Valora Corduroy."

Mabel took the photo in her hands and held it out for her and Dipper to see. The picture displayed a portrait of a middle-aged woman with long, dark brown hair. She had jade eyes, a freckled face, and a perfectly white smile. Her outfit was as Corduroy as one could get, wearing a red flannel, ripped jeans, and brown boots. On top of her physical appearance, there was something about her expression that gave off a very relaxed vibe. One very reminiscent of the one Wendy typically used to give off four years ago.

"She's beautiful…" Mabel said in awe at Valora's alluring appearance.

"Yeah, she was…" Dan agreed gloomily.

_Was._

"What...happened to her?" Dipper asked. "If you don't mind me asking…"

" _Dipper…_ " Mabel nudged him with narrowed eyes.

"No, it's fine," Dan assured with a sigh. "Sometimes, it helps to talk about it. Help me come to terms with the what had happened even after all these years."

Dipper and Mabel looked a bit unsure for a moment but remained quiet as they tuned in for his story.

"Anyway, thirteen years ago, Valora and I were out camping with the kids. A common weekend activity of ours…"

* * *

13 Years Ago

In the middle of the open Gravity Falls woods in the late afternoon, the Corduroy family had a campsite settled. They had a basic tent setup, a camping table, and a work-in-progress fireplace being prepared in the middle.

Marcus and Kevin were running around in circles around the campsite, playing tag with one another and giggling loudly. Dan sat at the camping table, cradling a sleeping infant Gus in his arms. However, he was growing irritated by his other two boys' giggling and how it could possibly disrupt Gus's sleep.

"WOULD YOU BOYS KNOCK IT OFF?!" Dan shouted at Marcus and Kevin, who suddenly stopped at the booming voice of their father. "YOU'RE GOING TO WAKE YOUR LITTLE BROTHER UP!"

However, Dan's failure to realize his own volume ending up waking Gus himself, causing him to start crying crankily. Humored by their father's absentmindedness, Marcus and Kevin proceeded to laugh mockingly at their father, who just grew even more infuriated.

" _BOOOOYYYS!_ " he yelled angrily at the two, who proceeded to run off.

" _Our youngest boy, Gus, had just been born a few weeks before. And at that point in time, none of the kids had grown older than six. So, as a good husband and caring father, I put myself in charge of watching over the kids for most of the trip, whereas Valora would handle most of the labor that came with setting up a campsite._ "

Not too far outside of the campsite, Valora stood at a tree stump with an ax in hand. On top of the stump sat a log of wood, which she promptly chopped in half with the ax. With one clean swing down the middle, she divided the log into two pieces. She picked up both pieces and threw them into a sack, which was already filled will a bunch of other log pieces.

She wiped a balm of sweat from her forehead as she pocketed the ax. Then, she proceeded to pick up the large sack of wood pieces and carry it over her shoulder as she began to make her way back to the campsite; all while she had a smile on her face.

" _And it was a great balance, because to Valora, nothing was ever too difficult. She was smart, brave, skillful, and courageous. She had the qualities of a great leader and an even greater mother._ "

As Valora returned to the campsite, she threw the sack of firewood down beside the fireplace. As she relaxed for a moment, she spotted her son, Marcus, making his way toward her with a bear trap in his hands.

"Hey, mom!" Marcus called for as he appeared to be struggling to open up the bear trap over his head. "How do I put this bear trap around my head like that one actor did in that one horror movie? I want to pull a prank on Kevin!"

Valora's eyes bulged uneasily. "Woah there!" she shouted as she ran over to him and snatched the bear trap from his hands. "Don't play this stuff, Marcus! I didn't spend nine months conceiving you just to watch you get yourself decapitated!"

Marcus looked down guiltily. "Sorry, mom…"

"Haha! You almost died!" laughed Kevin as he walked up beside his mother. Unhappy with his comment, however, Valora gave him a moderate smack on the back of his head. "Ow!"

" _Be nice_ to your older brother, Kevin," she warned him.

"Haha!" Marcus laughed, amused by Kevin getting smacked. "You got hit by-"

Valora crossed her arms and gave Marcus a stern glare, which intimidated him enough to cut himself off.

"...I mean…" Marcus retracted before suddenly turning to Kevin and wrapping a brotherly arm around him, which was returned. The two then looked up at their mother with innocent smiles. " _...love ya, bro!_ "

Valora gave a satisfied smile. "That's better," she nodded as she turned away and walked off. "Now stay that way or else  _neither of you_  are eating bear for dinner tonight."

Marcus and Kevin processed this warning with bulged eyes, neither of them wishing to miss out on having bear for dinner that night. However, neither of them could stand the idea of having to stick so closely together in order to not have to skip out. But, their craving for bear was stronger than their desire to be apart, and so the two boys simply groaned as they held their arms around one another.

" _Valora loved all her kids. But, there was no denying the fact that she was closest with Wendy and it wasn't hard to see why. They were the only two girls living in a household predominant by us men, so they found a very different bond in one another._ "

Along the edge of the campsite, Wendy sat away from the rest of her family beside a tree. There, she held a pocket knife in her hands, which she dug into the bark of the tree, carving little images.

Valora made her way over to her and smiled. "There's my Little Red! I've been looking for you."

Wendy glanced up at her for a moment before turning back to her carvings. "Hi, mom."

"What are you doing all the way over here by yourself?" Valora asked her as she kneeled down next to her. She immediately made note of her carvings. "Oh, I see. What're you carving this time?"

"Nothing," Wendy claimed, not entirely wishing to talk about them.

"Oh, c'mon, you can tell me.  _Tell me! Tell me!_ " Valora chanted in a mock deep voice while throwing her fists up and down. However, as she looked on at her daughter, she noticed that she didn't appear particularly amused and actually seemed somewhat unnerved. Her playful attitude then turned into concern. "Sweetie, are you alright?"

Wendy sighed. "I didn't tell you or dad, but I had a bad dream last night."

"Really? About what?"

"I don't know," Wendy shrugged. "There was this little yellow triangle guy with a top hat and a funny voice."

Valora looked at the carvings and spotted a little triangle with arms and legs etched into the bark. She pointed at it. "And this is supposed to be him?"

Wendy gave a subtle nod. "He said he knew who I was and that I'm going to lose someone that I really care about soon. He also called me an ice bag. Whatever  _that_  means."

Valora smiled as she rubbed the top of her daughter's pigtails. "It just means you have a really active imagination."

"But mom, I'm serious," Wendy told her as she pushed her hand away. "It was really freaky. What if I really  _will_  lose someone I care about? Like dad, or the boys, or... _you?_ "

"Wendy, sweetie, I promise you that it was just a bad dream," Valora assured her. "Yeah, sometimes they can be really scary, but that doesn't mean they'll actually happen. I'm not going anywhere. Neither is dad, or the boys. We're here by your side and always will be."

Wendy looked unsure for a moment as she looked back at her. "Will  _you_  always be by my side?"

"Wha-?" Valora questioned, caught slightly off guard by the question. "Of course! I'm your mother!"

"I know. It's just...I love dad, and Marcus, and Kevin, and Gus, but sometimes, they're a bit  _too_ crazy," Wendy admitted as she looked to the side, poking her finger around in the dirt. "Even Gus. And he's a baby!"

"You said it, kid…" Valora nodded tiredly, agreeing with her claim that the boys of their family aren't exactly the most normal.

" _You're_ never too crazy," Wendy added. "Also, you're not a boy…so…"

Valora chuckled. "I get it. A girl needs her mother to get away from all the crazy boys in her family. Don't worry, girl. No matter how much the boys may drive me insane, they'll never drive me away from  _you_. I'll  _always_ be by your side."

Wendy smiled as she looked back up at her mother. "Promise?"

Valora warmly smiled back at Wendy as she used her fingers to lightly brush some of her red hair off of her face. "Promise."

The two smiled at one another for a good moment before Marcus was seen running over toward the two.

"Hey, Wendy! You wanna play Needle in the Bearskin with Kevin and me?" Marcus offered as he pointed behind him, where there was a large bear pelt lying on the ground that suddenly started to move around from the inside.

" _It stinks in here!_ " Kevin shouted from inside the skin.

"We're making a deal! The first person to find the needle gets extra bear meat from every sibling's plate for dinner!" Marcus explained.

Wendy was obviously interested in the deal, but she still looked up at her mother for her approval. Valora looked back down at her and smiled.

"Go get 'em, Little Red," she said as she rubbed the top of her daughter's head one more time.

Wendy smiled excitedly before turning back to Marcus. She cracked her knuckles as she gave him a daring expression. "Prepare to fork up your bear legs…"

She proceeded to run along with him over to the bearskin, leaving Valora behind to chuckle as she watched her kids enjoy themselves. At that moment, Dan walked over to her with Gus in hand, who he had managed to get back to sleep again.

"Ah, Needle in the Bearskin. What a classic," he remarked nostalgically. "I miss playing that with my dad."

"I'm sure, but now you have to take the handle the responsibility of  _being_ a dad," Valora replied.

"Hey, I'm doing a good job!" he claimed as he gestured over to Gus in his arms. "Look here! I finally got Gus to sleep! And as for the rest of the kids, I like to think I'm a great dad to them!"

"Yeah, but maybe not the most responsible," Valora admitted.

Dan raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"Dan, I caught Marcus trying to put his head in a beartrap because of what he saw in a horror movie," Valora brought up to him, giving him a look of dissatisfaction.

"Oh, I know what movie he's referring to!" Dan proudly realized as he thought about it. "That's my boy! Already becoming a man of culture."

"What? No! Don't support this!" she told him disapprovingly. "Our kids shouldn't be trying to stick their heads in bear traps because of the influence of a horror movie! They can really hurt themselves! And on top of that, I found out that Wendy had a bad dream last night about some weird top hat triangle that said she's going to lose someone she cares about. Like, what kind of films are you showing these kids, Dan? This type of worry shouldn't come from a  _six-year-old!_ "

"Triangle?" Dan questioned, confused about what she was talking about. "I haven't shown her any movie about a triangle!"

"Well, whatever movies you  _have_  been showing her, they clearly aren't the types we should be exposing our kids to at their current age," she told him. "It's giving them crazy ideas and fears that they shouldn't be having."

"So, what? Let them face their fears then," he shrugged off.

"What?"

"To conquer a fear, you gotta face it, Valora," Dan explained to her. "It's better than keeping them sheltered up all the time so they can grow scared."

"I'm not saying we keep them  _sheltered_. I'm saying we keep them  _safe_ ," Valora clarified with narrowed eyes.

"They're Corduroys, Valora!" Dan reminded her irritatedly. "This type of thing is in their blood!"

"God, I hate it when you use that as an excuse," Valora said as she put an annoyed hand over her face for a moment. "They're not just  _your_ kids, Dan. They're  _our_ kids. And it's up to the both of us to protect and provide for them rather than always keeping them exposed to dangers that could potentially get them killed!"

"You see it as exposing them to danger. I see it as toughening them out!" Dan compared.

"They're  _children!_ "

"The earlier they're toughened out, the less afraid they'll be when they're older!" Dan argued. "Why do you think they love horror movies so much? Because they don't  _SCARE_ them!"

The tension of their argument was suddenly disrupted as Dan's voice had caused Gus to awaken and begin crying again. The two looked at him before looking back at one another. Valora then sighed as she reached out and took Gus from Dan's grasp. She patted him on the back and tried to get him to calm down before giving Dan a look.

"We aren't talking about this again…"

She proceeded to walk back toward the campsite with Gus, leaving Dan on his own. He looked on at her with an irritated look as she walked off, feeling himself growing tired of having the same discussion they've had multiple times before.

However, when he looked over to the side, he noticed that Marcus, Kevin, and Wendy had all stopped playing in the bear hide and were looking over at him. It seemed as though they had just seen the dispute that occurred between him and their mother and had paused their activity to listen to it. As soon as Dan had looked over at them, however, they all turned away and pretended to have been minding their own business.

Though, Dan knew that they had heard everything.

" _We had a disagreement about how to raise our children. Not that it had been the first time. But it was the spout that our arguments usually come from. Despite my want to toughen the kids out at a young age, the one thing I never wanted them exposed to was their mom and dad fighting._ "

When it came to dinner that night, there was very little that went on. Everyone ate bear except for Gus, who was being personally fed by Valora. Dan would have offered to help after all the work she had put into preparing the fireplace, but she had refused to speak with him, which was a typical aftermath of their arguments.

Marcus and Kevin filled the silence on their own, talking about horror movies they had seen. Wendy, on the other hand, sat quietly due to the discomfort of knowing her parents weren't happy with one another at that moment. She didn't want to make it obvious and tried to avoid eye contact with both of her parents, only looking over at them when their attention was drawn elsewhere.

By the end of dinner, she would just sigh and hope things got better by the next morning.

" _Valora and I were on silent terms with one another at that point, and the kids were the ones that filled it with noise. Nothing eventful happened as the night went on. Not until later that night when we were sleeping…_ "

_BOOM!_

"AH!" Dan exclaimed as he was suddenly awoken in his tent by a thunderous noise. As he sat up, he heard the sound of heavy rain coming from outside.

His attention was suddenly drawn beside him, where he was able to see through the darkness that his wife no longer laid beside him. He glanced around the tent for her, but only saw their kids.

"Valora?"

He then looked straight ahead and only then noticed that the tent had actually been opened and rain was pouring inside. In response, he jumped up out of his blankets and rushed to close the tent. At the same time, he began to wonder why the tent was even open in the first place.

That was when he made the potential connection between the tent and Valora's sudden absence.

 _But...why?_  He wondered to himself.

"Dad…?" Wendy asked as she sat up, half-awake.

"Wendy!" Dan said, somewhat startled by her awakening.

Wendy looked around and almost immediately noticed her mother's absence as well. "Where's mom?"

"I...uh…" Dan stuttered, not sure how to answer. "I don't know."

"W-what?"

"Listen to me, Wendy," Dan said as he grabbed his coat from the side and put it on. "I need you to  _stay here_  and look after your brothers. Don't you or any of them leave this tent. You hear me?"

Wendy hesitated. "But, dad, what's even hap-"

" _You hear me?!_ "

" _Yes!_ " she quickly replied.

"I'll be right back," Dan said as he zipped the tent open again and stepped out into the pouring rain. He quickly zipped the tent back up again, leaving his kids behind as he began searching for Valora.

" _A storm had been going on and I was woken by the loudest thunder I had ever heard. I looked to the side and noticed that Valora was gone and the tent was open. I told Wendy to stay and watch her brothers while I quickly ran out of the tent to find their mother._ "

"VALORA!" Dan called out for as he walked through the dark woods. "VALORA, WHERE ARE YOU?!"

He searched every inch of the surrounding woods that he could. The constant rain and evening darkness made his search all the more difficult, however. The heavy rain made it hard to hear for any possible response, whereas the darkness made it hard to see almost anything.

Still, he continued to search. But, the longer he searched without finding a trace of her, the more hopeless he became.

" _I spent hours looking around the forest; trudging through the muddy grass while calling her name. But I never got a response or found a trace of her. I had no idea where she had gone or if she was coming back. No idea if she was dead or alive. I didn't know anything._ "

" _VALORAAA!_ " he cried out desperately.

After hours of searching, he felt too hopeless to go on and dropped to his knees weakly as his eyes welled up with desperate tears.

" _And for the first time in my life…I felt weak._ "

* * *

Present

"In the morning, I searched the forest again, but I still found no trace of her," Dan continued. "Police searches and investigations were formed and  _they_ couldn't find anything either. There was no sign of any activity from her inside or outside of Gravity Falls. Eventually after months of searching, they just came to the conclusion that she had disappeared. It was either that or a bogus explanation like getting eaten by a bear."

"She just...disappeared?" Dipper asked, finding such an explanation hard to believe.

"But how is that possible?" Mabel asked.

"I don't know," Dan shrugged. "But none of it was easy to explain to the kids. They were all upset and confused, but Wendy was the most devastated."

"I can imagine…" Dipper said sympathetically.

"No, boy…you can't…" Dan tearfully denied as he shook his head. "As I said, Wendy was closest to her mother. And the more she grew, the more she reminded me of her. She took so much from Valora, it's uncanny. And it's why I'm harder on her. Because I can't risk losing Wendy the same way I lost Valora. For the most part, I'm proud of her and the woman she's become. But it's things like her stunt at college that test that. It reminds me that Valora was right about my parenting. That overexposing these kids to so much danger at a young age doesn't just toughen them out. It makes them feel invulnerable. It makes them think they can do anything and get away with anything."

He then leaned over to his shelf and grabbed a picture of Wendy from when she was a child. He looked down at it nostalgically as he held it in his hands.

"So now that I'm trying to teach her to be responsible, she hates it. Because it's not how  _I_  raised her," he continued explaining. "That was the part Valora played when she was around. I disrespected it...and it took me too long to see that. It took me too long to  _appreciate_  her for trying to keep our kids level-headed when I wouldn't."

While Dan looked at the picture of Wendy, the twins glanced at one another with their sympathetic looks for him. While the two still didn't know the exact fate of Wendy's mom, now that they knew the basic story of what had happened to her, it began to make sense why she was never a frequented topic around any of the family. It was particularly understandable to them now when thinking back to the previous day when Wendy coldly compared her father's overwhelming nature to that of her more collected mother.

And Dan's reaction to that moment began to make much more sense as well.

* * *

"I don't believe it."

"C'mon, Dipper…"

"Mabel, do you really think out of all the things that could've happened to Wendy's mom, it was getting eaten by a bear?" Dipper asked his sister.

"She went into the woods. Bears live in the woods. A bear found her and ate her," Mabel pieced together. "Adds up to me."

"You can't possibly believe that in a town as weird as Gravity Falls, getting eaten by a bear is the most probable thing?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

She sighed. "Look, Dipper,  _of course_  I don't believe that's what happened. I just...don't think this is something that calls for us anymore! First, you wanted to hunt down a possible ghost that could be haunting Wendy and now you want to solve the mystery of her disappearing mom?"

"Well, if Wendy's mom is dead, then there could be a chance that  _she's_  the ghost!" Dipper tried to reason.

"And what do you expect to do if you're right?" Mabel asked before pressing her face together mockingly. " _'Hey, Wendy! I snooped in your family history and found out your mom is dead and has been stalking you as a ghost! Let's kiss!'_ "

Dipper's face flushed red for a second. "W-what?! No! That's not... _UGH!_ "

"Can you two quiet down?" Evan told the two from his computer. "I'm reading through hundreds of tiny lines of code here, and you two bickering isn't making it any easier to get to what you're looking for."

Dipper glanced back at Mabel for a moment before looking back at Evan with an apologetic expression. "Sorry, Evan."

After the twins' visit to the Corduroy cabin, Dipper had decided that they make their way over to the Reeds residence for Evan's assistance. Since first meeting him from their day 'babysitting' him, they had yet to come to him for his hacking abilities. But upon remembering that Evan had such skills, Dipper figured he could use them in helping them learn more about Valora Corduroy and her disappearance. That is if there  _was_  anything else to learn about.

He recalled Evan being able to hack into government files for info on anomalies. But what was saying that he couldn't also do the same for people too?

"What are you even doing right now?" Mabel asked as she looked over at all the complicated-looking programs that Evan appeared to be working with on his screen.

"Something  _very_  illegal," he replied simply.

"Awesome!" she excitedly remarked.

"Not really," Evan denied as his focus remained on his screen. "I just broke through a government firewall. If I make any mistake that breaks my cover or exposes my location, I'll probably have about half an hour before the SWAT team is airlifted to my house."

"Geez, what kind of government firewall  _is_ that?" Dipper asked, unsettled by the extreme security measures.

"I'm trying to access a government network that holds private data and info on...well... _everything_ , I guess," Evan explained.

"In the world?"

"Well, not  _this one_ ," Evan replied. "This one is narrowed down locally to the Gravity Falls region. Every resident, every business, every landmark, and since its Gravity Falls, every  _monster sighting_...all recorded in this system with as much private info as they can provide. Although, the monster sighting folder is actually the vaguest. All it has is classified photographs that were taken of supposed weirdness. But, they're all blurred and hard to identify. And they're not even edited. They're in their original condition. It's crazy. They can get all this detailed info on everything and everybody else in town, yet they can't even snap a decent photo of a gnome."

"So, it's worthless then?" Dipper asked.

"Not entirely," Evan admitted. "It did aid me a bit when I was first learning of the town's weirdness. And some of the photos present weird silhouettes I've never seen before. But overall, it's nothing too special. The real meat of these files is, again, all the personal info," he said as he pulled up a file explorer program within the government database. "It's  _creepy_ how detailed some of this stuff is.  _Especially_  for the residents."

"Well, it's a good thing we're not residents then," Mabel claimed with a relieved smile. "We're technically just visitors. We don't  _live_  here."

"Actually, you two are in here as well," Evan claimed as he located a file with the twins' names on it.

"Wait, what?!" Mabel questioned as she and Dipper ran up beside Evan to look at his screen.

"Seriously?!" Dipper asked as he began reading the contents of the file that Evan pulled up. " _Dipper and Mabel Pines: Twins; Born August 31st, 1999; Age 16; Piedmont, California._  What the hell?!"

"That's just basic info. You can find that sort of stuff on any personal record," Evan told the two as he scrolled down the file. " _THIS_  is the creepy stuff."

" _Occasionally likes to pour the milk before the cereal_ ," Mabel read from her part of the file before letting out a shocked gasp. "How did they know?! I FEEL SO ASHAMED!"

" _Worst Joke: the one about the mathematician that crossed the road_ ," Dipper read from his part of the file.

Mabel snickered. "Yeah, I  _would_  call that your worst."

"Who the hell writes this stuff? This sounds like we're being stalked!" Dipper asked, finding the incredibly specific personal information in their file to be somewhat disturbing.

"I'm not sure. I heard a rumor that government officials get tips from a gnome or something," Evan suggested. "But those guys are idiots."

" _I'll_  say," Mabel agreed with an annoyed look as she recalled her most recent encounter with the gnomes.

"Alright, well, back to the matter at hand," Dipper told him. "We need you to look up someone by the name of Valora Corduroy- a wife and mother in the Corduroy family that went missing about thirteen years ago."

Evan effortlessly typed in the name and found her file in seconds. "Found it.  _Valora Corduroy_. Pretty much exactly as you described her. Mother of four, married to Dan Corduroy, went missing in 2003."

"Anything else you can find on her disappearance?" Dipper asked.

Evan scrolled around her file and clicked on various other files, quickly skimming through whatever he came across for any valuable details and information. "There're police reports from her investigation, but none of them come across any evidence on her whereabouts. Everything just kind of reaches a dead end by the end of the year, which means they probably stopped searching at that point. I'm not seeing very much other than that though."

Mabel turned to Dipper, who had his eyes focused on Evan's monitor as he scrolled through her info. "Dipper, c'mon. Maybe this is a sign that there's nothing for us here. If something weird happened, then there were no witnesses around in the forest to see what. I mean, maybe she got beamed to another dimension and became a badass, crime-fighting dimension-traveler! I mean, no police investigation could report come across evidence for  _that!_ "

Dipper still shook his head in denial as he turned back and began pacing around the room. "No...there  _has_ to be something. If this has all of her personal information and history, there has to be something else in there somewhere.  _A lead_  of some sort…"

Evan kept scrolling for a little bit until his eyes fell upon a bit of text that stood out to him. His eyes bulged in slight shock. "Hold on...I just found something  _really_ weird. A set of dates. According to this, Valora went missing on March 23rd, 2003. However, there's another date here that says she was last seen on May 23rd…"

"She was last seen  _after_ the day of her disappearance?" Dipper questioned.

"This is so weird," Evan said, growing unsettled as he searched the file more deeply. "From the same day, May 23rd, there's also the coordinates for her last known location. It's in the woods, but it's not anywhere near the same area as the section where she had supposedly gone missing."

"How credible even is all this info?" Mabel asked, somewhat skeptical of what she was hearing.

"From my experience,  _very_ ," Evan assured her. "That's what I'm so weirded out by all of this right now. I'm not sure how any of this is possible. I mean, it just doesn't add up."

"Then we need to go and see this place for ourselves," Dipper claimed.

"What?!" Mabel asked, finding Dipper's sudden idea insane.

"What? We need to go and check those coordinates out. It might lead us to another clue," Dipper explained to her.

"Dipper, it's getting late and you wanna go deep into the woods to find evidence of the whereabouts of a woman who we don't even know is even alive?" Mabel asked.

Dipper thought over her question for a moment. "Yeah, pretty much," he casually nodded, which made her slump forward annoyedly. He then turned back to Evan and pointed at his screen. "Send me those coordinates, Evan."

* * *

The sun had already set and allowed for the evening darkness to take over by the time Dipper and Mabel began making their way through the woods. Dipper viewed the coordinates that Evan sent him on his phone, which he very rarely ever found himself using since getting it before the summer. Along with the coordinates, Evan sent highlighted info from Valora's file in case he needed to read up on it again to aid on their mystery.

Mabel followed closely behind Dipper, though her hesitations and objection to their involvement still remained. However, at that point, she had long since accepted there was no use convincing Dipper to drop the mystery, even if she was admittedly curious about what had happened to Wendy's mom herself.

Dipper glanced down at his phone again, looking at their location and comparing it to the coordinates he was sent. "Looks like we're coming up on those coordinates Evan sent.

Mabel looked around the surrounding trees and raised an eyebrow. "This place looks kind of familiar…"

"Yeah, I was beginning to think so too a little while back," Dipper agreed as he looked around as well. "I'm not sure what it is though."

"I still don't understand," Mabel began. "Evan said the police reports had no evidence about what happened to Wendy's mom. Yet, apparently, her last known location was found two months after her disappearance? Like, how did that never come up?"

"That's what I'm curious about too," Dipper agreed at the oddity. "How can they even track a last known location like that and make nothing of it?"

"That's why I'm unsure about any of this," she admitted. "I mean, Evan says the info is reliable, but I don't know. I feel like there's something off about all of this."

"Well, either way, we're pretty much here already," Dipper said as he suddenly stopped walking and stood in place, looking around at their surroundings before glancing down at his phone again. "The exact spot of the coordinates he sent. You see anything notable?"

"No. But, I'm definitely getting a sense of familiarity from this place," Mabel said as she began walking in a direction of the woods to get a better look around.

"Yeah, but I don't understand why. I mean, have we been in this part of the woods before?" Dipper wondered.

As Mabel wandered into a nearby area in the woods, she spotted something that caught her eye. As her skin suddenly went cold, she began to realize why the area they were in was so familiar. "Uh,  _Dipper?_  You might wanna look at this…"

Dipper quickly walked up next to his sister and looked ahead at what she pointed at. As he saw what she was referring to, he began to grow unnerved as well. In the direction they faced through the trees, they spotted a cabin in the middle of the woods. A cabin that they had already visited earlier that day.

"Hang on a second...that's the Corduroy cabin!" Dipper realized as he looked back down at his phone. "These coordinates are located directly in the woods surrounding their house!"

"That makes even  _less_ sense! How could  _this_ be her last known location if she was pretty much right next to her house?" Mabel asked him, growing more unsettled with each revelation.

Dipper began to glance through some of the info that Evan had sent them for any extra details that might help explain things. However, his eyes bulged once he came to a whole separate realization upon rereading something they had gone over earlier.

"Hold on, Mabel. I'm reading through some of the information Evan sent and I think there was a bit of miscommunication earlier when he said Valora was last seen on May 23rd," Dipper told her.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, we thought he meant May 23rd, 2003, about two months after the day she disappeared," he began before turning his phone toward her for her to see the highlighted info. "But what Evan actually meant was May 23rd,  _2016!_ "

"Wait, what?!" Mabel's eyes widened, growing incredibly confused.

"Apparently, Valora was seen at this spot last month," Dipper explained as he stared at the date. "But, how the hell could anyone have made an observation like that?  _WHO_ could have made an observation like that?"

"Wait...Thompson said that the night they vandalized their professor's room was on April 23rd," Mabel remembered. "Valora disappeared March 23rd, 2003, and was last seen May 23rd, this year…"

"She disappeared on the 23rd and she was last spotted on the 23rd...and the 23rd was when Wendy got busted at her college...because she  _SAW_ someone…" Dipper connected.

Mabel's heart dropped once she realized something else. "Uh...Dipper?! What day is  _today?_ "

_CLANK! CLANK!_

U-shaped metallic bars had suddenly been shot out of nowhere, wrapping around each twin's throat with both ends of the bar piercing into the trees behind them, pinning them both. They both hung a few inches off the ground from necks, choking slightly as the bars tightly pressed against their throats. Instinctively, they placed their hands around the bars, trying to free themselves, but the bars were too far embedded into the tree that it wasn't possible, and they were simply left to desperately hang and struggle.

" _Thursday...June...23rd…_ " Dipper replied to his sister through his choking.

At that moment, two bright lights suddenly flashed in front of them. As they looked up, they realized they came from the sides of a helmet being worn by a humanoid figure who began to approach them. Horrified, the twins froze in the midst of their struggle to escape the metallic bars choking them.

As the figure stepped in front of them, they were able to have a clearer vision of it. The person wore a type of matte white armor with a shape that defined feminine characteristics. The armor stretched out through the person's body; the joints marked with black lines. The helmet was also matte white while also having a large, blue, V-shaped visor and lights that stuck out from the sides.

' _It just looked like they were wearing white…_ ' Thompson's voice echoed in Dipper's head.

" _No...way…_ " Dipper choked in utter disbelief as his mind began racing at the thought of who the figure really was.

The figure then pointed their right arm at the two, which triggered a futuristic laser cannon-like weapon to pop up and target them. Right after, the figure's helmet began to automatically disassemble into a bunch of nanobots, revealing her angry, scarred, freckled face and neck-length dark brown hair with a single white streak, prompting both twins to gasp in shock.

"So, you two wanna go ahead and tell me how the hell you know who I am and why you're looking for me right outside my family's house?" asked Valora Corduroy as she aimed her laser cannon at the two.

The twins stared at her with their mouths agape; having absolutely no idea how to respond or react. However, Mabel suddenly smiled as she looked over at Dipper.

" _Ha! I was...right! She DID...turn into a badass!_ " Mabel managed to shout over to him in an accomplished tone through her choking. " _Haha, we...are SO screwed!_ "

 

 


	35. Little Red Riding: Part 3

Dipper and Mabel were pinned to separate trees by their necks with metal-like bars, which barely held both of them above the ground enough to choke them. Stood right in front of them was the revealed mother of Wendy, Valora.

It was an easy correlation to make based on the memory they retained of the picture they had seen of her earlier that day. Despite the fact the night darkness within the woods made it difficult enough to see, she was still recognizable. Aside from the new white streak in her shortened dark brown hair and some new scars, she still looked just like the woman in Dan's picture frame, albeit, in a white suit comprised of nanotechnology rather than red flannel.

To the twins, learning she was alive was both exciting and terrifying. Exciting because of the sheer revelation of finding out Wendy's mother was actually alive after all this time. However, it was terrifying when they looked at her now. It was the same woman, but the face was far angrier. And considering she caught them as they spoke of her, they could only wonder how long she might've been following them.

They had many questions to ask, but given the current circumstances, they weren't exactly in a place to ask them just yet.

With her arm cannon aimed at them, she cautiously took a few more steps toward them. "Tell me already. Who the hell are you two?" she demanded.

Mabel tried to pull on the bar around her neck in an attempt to give herself breathing room. " _I don't...mean to be a stickler or anything, but...don't you think...this way of catching us...is a bit overkill for a...pair of teens?_ "

Valora took Mabel's reply as an attempt to convince her to let them free so they could either escape or fight back. She narrowed her eyes even more as she aimed her arm cannon more in her direction. "Oh, you must think you're  _real_  smart, huh?"

" _Actually, he's the smart one_ ," Mabel replied as she gestured over to Dipper. " _He scores fives...on all his AP exams. Meanwhile, I can barely get away with a C...in standard Algebra._ "

" _Mabel, stop trying...to piss her off!_ " Dipper told her through his own choking.

" _I'm not! I'm just...spitting...the truth!"_  Mabel assured him as her shortage of oxygen was starting to take a toll on her as her face began to turn purple.

"I couldn't care less about whether or not you're teens," Valora admitted. "Your presence here and knowledge of who I am serves as suspicious enough. So I'll ask you one last time: who  _are_  you two?"

Dipper's face soon began to turn purple as well. " _P-Please! We know...Wendy!_ "

" _She's...our...friend!_ " Mabel weakly added.

Valora's eyes bulged as she heard her daughter's name as an association with the two teens she currently held captive.

" _Wendy?_ " she questioned under her breath.

" _Mrs. Corduroy...please!_ " Dipper cried out weakly, outstretching his arm desperately.

Without further thought, Valora retracted her arm cannon and glanced down at her wrist. She pressed a single button, which immediately triggered the bars surrounding the twins' necks to split open, freeing and dropping them on the ground. With their airways clear, the two laid for a moment as they coughed violently and gasped for air, slowly replenishing the normal color in their faces as they did so.

"Phew!" Mabel exclaimed as she threw herself on her back exhaustedly. "I think I was starting to see a  _light_  there for a moment."

Dipper began to collect himself up from the ground but paused when he noticed one of the pieces of the bars that had constricted the two a moment ago. He picked it up and examined it, taking note of the odd pattern that gave off an illusion of waviness on the metal's actual flat surface.

"What kind of metal even is this?" Dipper asked as he looked on at it. "I've never seen a pattern like this before."

"Actually, it's not a metal," Valora jumped in. "It's a metalized metallic metalloid nonmetal called  _Metalalodiac_. The name's a bit all over the place, but as it is, it's actually got a higher recorded strength than most…"

She came to pause as she looked down at the twins, who simply stared at her wondrously.

"...uh...standard elements…" she finished as she stared back at them curiously for a few seconds. She then cleared her throat and awkwardly smiled at them. "Anyway, I'm sorry about...you know...what just happened."

"I-It's fine…" Dipper mindlessly replied as he and Mabel continued to stare up at her in awe.

Valora admittedly began to get somewhat uncomfortable with the twins just staring up at her. Though she could understand why they looked at her as they did, she still wished to transition away from that part of their encounter. "I...uh...don't think I got either of your names."

"Mabel Pines."

"Dipper Pines."

"And  _you're_  Wendy's mom…" Mabel finally pointed out.

Valora wasn't sure how to feel about her blatantly restating that, but regardless, she gave her a slight smile back. "Yeah, I guess I am."

Dipper already knew who she was before, but hearing Valora confirm it herself made his mouth hung agape. "Holy crap…"

"Awesome!" Mabel exclaimed excitedly.

"We have so many questions to ask you!" Dipper began to her, finally moving on to the question stage now that the choking incident had been cleared. "Like...what are you?"

"Are you from the future?" Mabel asked eagerly before letting out a gasp at a potential realization. "Is that where you got all these gadgets like that suit and the weird nonmetal metal or whatever?"

"The future…" Dipper repeated, beginning to consider that theory himself. "Is that where you've been all these years?"

Valora couldn't say she didn't expect to be bombarded with questions, but it still wasn't the reason she was there and talking to them. So, as they continued to ask, she began to slowly back away from them. "Uh...look, you two. I can see you're both really curious and that's cool! But, if it's understandable, I didn't really come here for this. So, I think I'm just going to head on my way…"

Dipper's amazement and curiosity immediately turned into severe disappointment with her claim. "What? Are you serious? You're just gonna leave us without anything? "

Valora turned back to him and raised an eyebrow. "What exactly am I supposed to share with a pair of teens that I just met?"

"Uh...I don't know. Some sort of explanation?" Dipper suggested, raising an eyebrow at her. "I mean, you're our best friend's mom. You disappeared years ago and no one ever found out what had happened. Now, we find out you're out here and alive after all these years and you're just gonna walk away instead of telling us anything?"

"I don't have an obligation to tell either of you anything for looking into a situation that didn't call for you," Valora told him bluntly.

Dipper glanced over at Mabel, whom he expected to be holding an 'I told you so' look on him. However, he saw that she actually appeared somewhat unsure. As if despite her ongoing opposition to their search, she was actually somewhat disappointed herself.

He then turned back toward Valora and narrowed his eyes. "Well, how else did you expect us to react? Would just you hope we'd just shrug this off and forget by tomorrow morning? You know that finding out you're still alive is probably one of the biggest discoveries we might ever make this summer, right? At the very least, you could provide us with some idea for where you've been all this time." An even more disappointing idea came to mind. "Unless...you left your family at your own will…"

Valora's face displayed shock as he suggested this idea. Mabel was immediately not a fan of the idea either, nor was she a fan of Dipper's tone assuming it was potentially the case. "Dipper, that's jumping to conclusions…"

"You don't think it's possible?" he asked her. "Think, Mabel. She goes out of her way to protect her own family from strangers outside their house, but can't even be there for her kids as they grow up? Who's to say she didn't just walk out on them?"

"Me," Valora answered, grabbing their attention again. "Because I  _didn't_  walk out on them. I had four kids; one of them born just weeks before. You know what kind of mother I'd be if I had voluntarily decided to drop out so early on in their lives?" she asked as she walked up and stopped directly in front of Dipper. "A pretty damn bad one, I'd say. I  _loved_  my family, and I would never  _dream_  of walking out of their lives like that." She then displayed a look of sorrow as she sighed. "But, that didn't stop the world from taking me from them."

As Dipper felt a strong sense of genuine sincerity from the look on her face, he felt inclined to believe her. Mabel, on the other hand, already had a growing sense that she had never left her family on purpose. Still, she remained curious as to what events resulted in her fate.

"How'd that happen?" she asked.

Valora thought for a moment, hesitating on whether or not she even wanted to explain. "It's a long story…"

" _HEY!_ "

The three were then startled by the sudden, nearby shouting of a deep, masculine voice. Their eyes all darted in the direction of the voice, which came from the Corduroy cabin. As they looked over at it, they saw Manly Dan emerge from the cabin's front door with his three sons stood behind him. He stepped off of his front porch with an ax in hand, glancing around angrily.

"WHO'S OUT THERE?!" he asked threateningly as he looked around, beginning to walk in the direction that the twins and Valora stood at in the woods.

Valora's eyes widened as she realized Dan was walking toward them. She pressed a button on her wrist before quickly grabbing a hold of each of the twins' shoulders. "Hold on!"

Dipper looked up at her hand on his shoulder and raised an eyebrow, not sure what she meant. "Wait...wh-"

_VYOOM_ _!_

The three suddenly began to glow blue for a brief moment before flashing away without leaving a single trace of their presence behind.

The flash went unseen by any of the Corduroy boys, and Dan simply paused as he continued to glance around angrily. " _HELLO?!_ I ASKED,  _WHO'S OUT THERE?!_ "

Still not hearing or seeing anyone, Dan began to grow skeptical about whether there was anyone even in the area anymore. Marcus, Kevin, and Gus quickly ran up behind him where he stood.

"I'm telling you, dad. We heard voices out there," Gus assured his father. "At least three of them."

"Well, whoever they might've been, it looks like my big manly voice scared 'em off," Dan told them as he began to walk back toward the house. "Now, I gotta figure out where your sister is. It's way past her usual shift and she still ain't home. None of you boys heard from her at all?"

The boys looked at one another and simultaneously shook their heads at their father, none of them having seen Wendy since the morning either. Dan raised an eyebrow, his concern for his daughter growing slightly. Though, he still tried to keep himself composed, not ready to panic yet.

"Where the hell is she at?" Dan asked as he walked inside and reached for the home phone attached to the wall, dialing his daughter's number. "I'm gonna try calling her…"

* * *

Following a day of various trivial heists that they had taken on, Stan and Wendy had returned to the Mystery Shack that night to prepare for their upcoming jewel store heist.

To Stan's surprise, Ford still had yet to return home after leaving for McGucket's. Which was fine by him, because it meant they still had the Shack to properly prepare for the job without being scolded for leaving in the first place.

On a similar note, Abuelita had fallen asleep sometime in the middle of her soap opera marathon, and therefore, hadn't acknowledged Stan's return so she could resume looking after him as Ford initially tasked her with. Additionally, Soos and Melody were upstairs in their bedroom, but they seemed more focused on trying to crop out an explosion to use as a video effect than they were on Stan and Wendy's arrival.

That left Stan and Wendy alone in the gift shop to prepare for the heist. For the occasion, Stan wore a black suit and tie, whereas Wendy wore a black jacket and black jeans. She stood in front of a mirror viewing her appearance as she put on a black beanie, completing her heist outfit.

At the main counter, Stan placed his old heist briefcase and opened it up. Inside was his typical heist gear from back in the day, including a rope, a walkie-talkie, a flashlight, binoculars, gloves, and more. While he knew it was all useful equipment, all he needed at that moment were the gloves, which he took out and promptly put on.

As he shut the briefcase, he heard a nearby vibration. He glanced around for a moment before his eyes fell upon Wendy's phone, vibrating amongst the counter as someone tried to contact her.

"Kid, it looks like you got a call here," he mentioned as he looked at her over his shoulder.

Wendy walked over to the counter and picked up her phone, glancing at the caller ID. "Oh, it's just my dad," she said with an eye-roll before carelessly placing her phone back down and walking off. " _Ignore._ "

Stan's eyes widened in slight shock of her action. "Quite a decision."

"I'm not worried about him," she brushed off with a shrug before displaying an enthusiastic smile. "Besides, we got a jewel store heist ahead of us!"

"Damn right we do!" Stan nodded with equal excitement. "I'm glad to see you're ready to get this done."

"I was born ready!" she confidently stated. "This is going to be our first big take!"

"Just keep in mind that because of that, we got a lot riding on us this time," Stan reminded her. "We hit a lot of places earlier, but they weren't that special. Well, at least, they weren't to  _you_. But anyway, a mistake here and there before wouldn't have ruined us. But for this, we need to be  _flawless_. We need to ready for everything and anything. One wrong move could trash the whole thing."

"No worries, old man. I already know what's at stake here," Wendy assured him as she walked back over to the counter and sat up amongst it. "Trust me, what you're going to see later is the getaway of the century. We  _got_ this."

"That's the spirit!" Stan cheered with a smile. "Ya know, kid, in all the time I've known you before today, I never could've imagined you as a potential robbing buddy. But today, you've really proved yourself to be a lot more than the lazy cashier I knew when I hired ya."

Wendy knew he was right. They never had much of a dynamic in the time she used to work for him. Between her laziness and occasional attempts to intentionally anger him on the job, she never left much room to paint herself in such a positive light in his eyes. Sure, they always had a mutual respect for one another regardless, and there were times where the two really did have to work together for the greater good. But never had they truly shared a bond and respect for one another like they had at that moment.

"Thanks, Mr. Pines," she told him with a grateful smile.

"Don't mention it," Stan nodded. "I just wish I had known about this little skill of yours sooner. Imagine what high-end jobs we could've been doing now had we started robbing years ago. Especially given the criminal experience you had."

"Eh, I wouldn't call myself much of a criminal back then," Wendy admitted. "I'd say the most illegal thing I had ever really done at the time was just steal snacks with my friends. Hell, what am I saying? I still do that  _now_. But other than that, it was all just typical high school trouble. Nothing extraordinary."

"But, I thought you said you've had a chase with the cops before?" Stan recalled from earlier that day.

"That happened two months ago when I got expelled."

"Woah! So, you did something so bad at school that you got busted by the cops?" Stan questioned, finding this revelation shocking compared to what he had assumed. "Man, I was just thinking you got caught cheating on an exam, or that you cussed out a teacher or something. Didn't think you got expelled for doing something  _that_ crazy."

"Yeah, I didn't tell you earlier because I wasn't really in the mood, but it was pretty nuts," Wendy said as she lied down on top of the counter, kicking her legs up.

"What'd you do?"

"Ugh. My college professor for math was a jerk," she began. "Sucks at teaching, sucks at grading, sucks at being  _tolerable_...he was just awful. It eventually got to the point where my friends came up with a plan to sneak into the school one night and tear up his class."

"That's an appropriate response," Stan agreed with her ways, mentally imagining himself doing the same with some of his own high school teachers back in the day.

"Right. Anyway, we decide to do it and it all goes well at first," she continued. "But, as it turned out, there was security watching the place, and they knew we were there. So, at that point, we decide to make a break for it before they could find and catch us."

"But they still managed to nab all of ya, huh?" Stan presumed.

"Not all of us. Just me."

Stan's briefly paused as he processed this revelation. "Really?"

"I mean...this is where it becomes kind of difficult to talk about," Wendy said as she stared up at the ceiling, the entire experience starting to become extremely vivid to her. "You see, we decided to hop the fence, and I was the last one to do so. But, when I got to the top, I didn't jump down. I just...sat there. All because I saw something  _weird_."

"What do you mean?" Stan asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It was this... _woman_. And I'll never know for sure, but...she had a striking resemblance to how I remember my mom," she told him, squinting her eyes as she recalled the face. "She just...stood there and looked right at me. And I looked right at her. And for a moment, we just... _stared_  at one another. I wanted to say something to her, but, before I knew it, security had caught up and pulled me down from the fence."

Stan looked to the side and began to think as she went on.

"Anyway, I was cuffed and taken into the office," she continued. "My dad was called and he came and…it was a big thing. By the end of it, the college admins simply decided to have me expelled."

"Just you?" Stan asked. "Whatever happened to your friends?"

"They got off clean," she replied. "When I got caught, the administration wanted me to expose them, but I kept my mouth shut and just tried to tell them it was all my idea. They were relentless for a bit, but soon enough, they accepted and just had  _me_ kicked out. A bit of a shame, considering the whole night wasn't even my idea, but it is what it is, I guess."

"You... _you_  took the blame...for something  _your friends_  made you do?" Stan questioned with a somewhat hesitant look.

"Well, they didn't  _make_ me, but...yeah. I took the blame," she admitted. "It sucks, but it's whatever. They're still my friends and I care about them. So, I just...took one for the team. And ever since then, my dad's been tougher on me than usual. He gives my brothers so much leverage. Meanwhile, all I get is a lecture every other hour. But, there's only so much of that I can take. Dealing with him these past two months has been a pain, but today, I've just felt...free." She glanced over at him as she continued speaking. "I haven't felt this way in a while and I'm not sure I wanna let it go yet. I've thought about what you said earlier, and maybe college  _isn't_ for me. So, maybe when this heist is done and I get my cut, I can just...stay here," she thought aloud as she sat back up. "Keep living the criminal life with my old boss. Kinda like you said back at the market - we'd be the most unstoppable robbers in America."

Stan knew that Wendy assumed telling him this would make him eager, but the truth was, it made him terrified. Knowing now how Wendy made such a major sacrifice for all of her friends when they were the ones deserving of the blame. All because she  _cared_ about them.

That wasn't to say that he didn't think caring for friends was important. But when your 'friends' are the ones who come up with such a risky plan with the potential to destroy their futures and the person who ends up getting in trouble for it was the person who had no involvement in coming up with it in the first place, that was a betrayal by Stan's standards.

To think Wendy was alright with taking such a hit for them. To think that her friends had  _that_  much of an influence on her.

He wondered what that would mean if the jewel store heist went wrong. What if in a hypothetical scenario, they had to ditch the car and take their escape on foot and in that process, she ends up getting caught rather than him? Would his influence prompt her to make such a sacrifice for him? Would she take responsibility for the whole crime to save him? She couldn't. He wouldn't be able to live with himself if someone as young as she was ended up taking responsibility for his crimes.

On top of that, he realized that her dad was actually more justified in his recent ways than she originally thought. No matter the outlook, his daughter had just gotten herself expelled from college for a ridiculous reason and now he has to send her away from home on her own so she can continue elsewhere. Even though Stan never attended college himself, he knew well about how expensive it was. It didn't occur to him before, but if her father was investing so much in her future only to watch her throw it away because of an unprofessional vengeance on a bad professor, then he had more of a right to be upset than he had originally thought.

And now, Wendy was considering dropping out of college completely to stay in Gravity Falls and live a life of crime. All because of  _him_.

His influence was certainly to blame, but another factor that contributed was Wendy's lack of acceptance of the fact that her father was trying to steer her in the right direction. She viewed his attempts to course-correct her as overbearing and it forced her to reflect her own faults upon him. She was troubled and refused to admit it; instead, turning to crime as a crutch for her facade.

And he knew now that he had to turn Wendy away from the current path he accidentally set her upon before it was too late.

"Of course, first, we actually gotta start making our way toward that title," Wendy finished as she hopped off the counter. "So, c'mon. Let's snag a necklace!"

She walked over to the front door and opened it up. She then took one step out onto the porch before turning back around and noticing that Stan hadn't moved an inch from his spot by the counter.

"Are you coming?"

Stan stared at her for a moment with a look of hesitation. Soon enough, he sighed. "Kid, we can't do this job."

Wendy raised an eyebrow, thrown off by his words. "W-What do you mean?"

"I mean, we're not doing this," Stan told her as he took his gloves off and set them down on the counter. "I'm calling the heist off."

" _What?_ " Wendy asked as she walked back inside toward him, shocked by his sudden mind change. "Why?"

"Because you're not ready."

" _Not ready?_  You've been praising my driving and getaways all day!" she reminded him. "Have you already forgotten about the eleven jobs we cleared today? I have the skill to go to the next level!"

"It isn't about your skill," he told her as he opened up his heist briefcase and placed his gloves back inside.

"Then what is it about?" Wendy asked, physically turning his face back toward her in a demanding matter. "Is it because I told you how I got caught by the cops? Do you think bringing me along is too risky now? Because you know I'm not perfect? You know, that's a lot to say from a guy who's been to prison three times!"

"What?! No! I didn't even say anything like that!" Stan exclaimed, pushing her away from him as she began to get touchy. "I'm just...I'm calling it off for your own good!"

" _My own good?_ " Wendy asked, baffled.

"Yes! Your own good! Because  _this_  ain't you!" Stan told her frankly, which got a confused look out of her. "Look, I empathized with a lot of what you said you go through with your dad. But unlike  _my_ dad,  _yours_ actually  _cares_ about you, kid! You don't see it like that because of how much stress and pressure he's put on you recently. But all of that is because he's trying to  _help_ you!"

" _Help_  me?" Wendy questioned, unconvinced.

"Yeah!  _Help_  you," Stan repeated. "When I messed up as a teen, all my dad did was throw a duffle bag into my arms and tell me to scram! When you messed up, your dad may have gotten angry, but he didn't throw you out. Instead, he decided to go hard on you to make sure you wouldn't make the same mistakes again when you went on your own." He then gestured toward themselves at that moment. " _This_ is a mistake, Wendy! I mean, dropping out of school to become a robber with a man so old that he sometimes spends an hour trying to tie his own shoes? I'm not a role model, kid! I'm telling you - this ain't the life you want to make for yourself!"

Wendy stared at him for a moment, processing every word he said. Then, she narrowed her eyes at him as she began to clench her fists tightly.

"First, you tell me happiness comes from the life you make for yourself instead of the one someone makes for you," she reminded him as she began to tear up. "Now,  _YOU'RE_  trying to tell the kind of life that I  _don't_ want to live?"

"Kid, you're not listening…" Stan said as he walked toward her with his hand reached out.

"No, I'm DONE listening!" she burst, slapping his hand out of the way. "I'm done listening to you, my dad, and everyone else! I'm  _nineteen!_  My life is what  _I_ decide to make of it! And so, if I say I wanna rob a jewel store,  _then I wanna rob a jewel store!_ "

"We're not robbing a jewel store, Wendy!" Stan tried to tell her.

"You're right.  _We_ aren't," she told him before quickly swiping his heist briefcase from the counter and running out the open door. " _BUT, I AM!_ "

"What?!" Stan exclaimed, taking a second to process her actions. As soon as he realized what she was doing, he quickly ran out the door to follow her. But as soon as he stepped onto the porch, she was already getting into her car. Instead of chasing her to the car and possibly starting a scene, he stood in place on the porch and called out to her. "HEY! DON'T YOU HIT THAT STORE! YOU CAN'T DO THAT JOB ON YOUR OWN!"

Despite his protests, Wendy shut her car door and started it up. She quickly put the car in reverse and drove at a backward angle until the passenger window aligned with her view of Stan. She cracked it open and looked over at him one more time. " _WATCH ME!_

Against his initial thoughts not to go after her, he made a last-second attempt to run after her but was too late, as she stepped on the gas and proceeded to speed out of the Shack's lot to take on the heist by herself.

"WENDY!" he shouted out desperately as he watched her speed off into the distance. "Dammit! What have I done? I've really gotten into that kid's head. She doesn't realize that her dad's just trying to help her. She also doesn't realize that she was just the getaway driver. She doesn't know  _a thing_ about actually robbing a place herself..."

* * *

_VYOOM!_

A blue light emerged in the middle of a clearing in the woods, projecting an image of three figures. The figures then solidified as the light flashed, revealing the transported figures to be Dipper, Mabel, and Valora. Valora stood tall after the teleportation process, but Dipper and Mabel immediately began to stumble from sudden balance loss as their heads spun.

"Woah, steady!" Valora said as she kept her hands on the twins' shoulders to keep them balanced as they dizzily stumbled. "First teleportations like that usually cause dizziness."

"No kidding…" Mabel said as her eyes spun, to which she promptly fell flat on her face as Valora let her go.

Dipper stumbled into a tree, which he promptly held himself onto to steady himself. As he slowly became capable of analyzing his surroundings again, he looked around and wondered what had just happened and where they were. "W-What the…? How did you…? Where are we?"

Mabel pulled her head up from the ground as her dizziness began to fade as well. She gasped as she looked around wondrously. "Is this the  _future?_  Wow! It looks...just like any normal forest in the present," she realized. "Well, at least, we haven't stripped the entire Earth of its trees yet! Glad to know mankind still isn't  _completely_  terrible yet!"

"We're not in the future," Valora told them with a chuckle. "We're just in another part of the forest."

"Wait, so no time travel?" Dipper asked as he walked back over to her. "You just...regularly teleported us here?"

"She probably has the ability to travel through time too," Mabel assumed as she stood back up on her feet from the ground.

"Actually, I can't," Valora finally admitted. "I'm not a time traveler. At all."

Dipper raised an eyebrow. "Then, what are you?"

"I don't really have a good answer," Valora said as she rubbed the back of her neck. "I guess I'm kind of like...a dimension-hopper or something? Whatever the term is for someone who travels the multiverse."

Dipper and Mabel immediately went wide-eyed by this revelation. "The multiverse?" they questioned simultaneously.

"No way!" Mabel then shouted in awe.

"I'm surprised. None of this weirds either of you out so far?" Valora asked, impressed that the two hadn't just run away freaking out after all they've been through and learned so far. "Between the teleporting and finding out that your friend's mom is some crazy chick who jumps through dimensions, I'm shocked I haven't scared either of you off yet."

"We're kind of  _used_ to the concept of weird at this point," Dipper told her.

Mabel nodded. "Yeah, and something like dimensional travel?  _Pssh!_  Been there, done that!"

"Speak for yourself," Dipper said with an eye-roll, referring to his sister's unintentional trip into the multiverse four years ago.

"Aw, I'm sure Grunkle Ford would love to take you dimension-hopping one day!" Mabel assured her brother as she nudged him in the arm. "If he can come up with a portal that doesn't risk destroying the universe that is…"

"Wait a second...I knew a Ford…" Valora realized upon connection of the name 'Ford' and term 'dimension-hopping'. "Do you two mean  _Stanford Pines?_ "

"Yeah, he's our great uncle," Dipper told her.

Valora's eyes bulged upon this revelation. The fact that she stood in front of Stanford Pines' great niece and nephew, both of whom she had nearly choked to death just minutes ago.

"Huh...small world," she simply replied with a smile. "Or is it small  _other_ worlds…? Man, I can't believe after all this time, I still haven't nailed down dimensional terminology," she said to herself before realizing she was going on a tangent. "But anyways, I thought I recognized that name! I've met him one time during my trips years back!" she revealed to the two, which prompted even further shocked expressions from them. "I can't believe it! You two are his niece and nephew! Wow, he actually found his way back here? I mean, I assume so if you both know him."

"Four years ago, yeah," Dipper nodded, staring at her in continued disbelief that she actually knew their great uncle.

"Four years…" Valora repeated before looking away for a moment, processing the amount of time. Her eyes narrowed dejectedly upon another realization as she whispered to herself, "I just came back  _three_ years ago...wow…"

"So, you're our friend's lost mom  _and_ you've met our great uncle?" Mabel concluded. "Okay. Now you're  _definitely_ obligated to a story."

Valora chuckled. "Alright, alright. I'll tell you guys. Though, it's all kind of a long story."

"Well, it's not like we're bound to twenty-one minutes or anything," Dipper shrugged.

"Well, okay," Valora settled on after a brief moment of hesitation. She then looked around at the clearing they stood in. "First things first, I should probably tell you both that this part of the forest isn't actually some random spot I teleported us to."

Dipper glanced around for a moment. "Huh, I just figured that you just had some sorta 'random nearby location' button that you pressed to get away quickly."

"Well, I actually  _do_ have a button like that," she confirmed as she looked down at her wrist for a brief second. "But no, this is area is pretty particular. I don't know if you looked this spot up when you found out about me, but this is where I spent my final evening with my family before everything changed..."

* * *

13 Years Ago

In the same clearing, a tent sat out in the middle, covered in the evening darkness. The moon was covered by dark clouds that began to cluster against the night sky.

The Corduroy family laid inside the tent, eyes shut as they slept. At that moment, however, the ground they laid upon began to rumble slightly. Additionally, a bright beaming light began to flicker through the forest, hitting against the tent.

The surrounding activity went unbeknownst to most of the family, with the only one awake enough to truly acknowledge it being Valora.

" _We were spending the night camping, as per our usual family activity. Late into the night, while we were sleeping, I was woken by the ground rumbling and a light from the outside flashing through the tent._ "

After turning back and forth beneath her blankets, trying to ignore the rumbling, Valora eventually sat up. She rubbed her tired eyes before looking straight ahead of her. As her vision adjusted, she spotted the shadowy silhouette of a floating triangle with arms, legs, and a top hat through the tent with the light beaming behind it.

"AH!" she lightly shrieked, jumping back slightly as the shadow startled her. She panted fearfully as she stared at the floating shadow. Glancing around at the rest of her family, she was surprised that she hadn't managed to wake anybody else.

She analyzed the shadow for a moment as she tried to make out what it was. There was a sense of familiarity she got from looking at it, though she wasn't awake enough to make an immediate connection. Regardless, she could've passed it off as an abnormal tree branch or something in the way of the light. However, the shadow wasn't motionless.

It was  _hovering_.

That detail unnerved her and made her fearful that something dangerous was outside their tent. Her protective mode kicking in, she slowly crawled on her knees and leaned over to the side to equip her ax. While remaining crouched, she stood onto her feet and prepared herself as she put her hand on the tent's zipper.

_ZIIIP!_

Upon opening the tent, she cautiously poked her head out and glanced around. Immediately, she found there was no triangular figure hovering in front of the tent, much to her surprise. The bright, almost blinding light still shined through the forest though, prompting her to shield her eyes with her arm.

She crawled back inside the tent and looked to check on the hovering triangular shadow. However, she quickly found that it had disappeared. Unsettled, she glanced back outside before stepping out and searching the perimeter to see if an animal had actually passed through the area. But once again, there wasn't anything in sight.

As she tried to think about what she had just seen, the bright light began to flicker, which grabbed her attention. Shielding her eyes from the direct sight of the light's intense brightness, she looked in the direction of the woods that it emerged from.

" _The flashing light didn't look like anything normal. It was like someone was working on some evil science experiment in the middle of the woods. Looking back, I should've just woken my family so we could get up and move. But instead, I stupidly decided to check it out on my own, thinking I was being 'protective' of them._ "

She began walking toward the flickering light, continuing to shield her eyes as she did so. It took some time, but she soon found herself tracing the light back to what appeared to be a wooden house, according to her peripheral vision.

" _I walked for a little bit, and eventually, I traced the bright lights back to an old shack in the middle of the woods._ "

* * *

Inside the Mystery Shack's basement, Stan Pines sat in front of a control panel, pressing various buttons. He looked back and forth between the panel itself and an open page within a book with a six-fingered hand on the cover that was marked with a  _1_. Then, he glanced up at the large triangular portal as it began to light up brightly, sparks coming from the center hole.

"Yes! It's doing something…" he said to himself hopefully as the portal lit up. He glanced down at the journal. "Maybe I don't need the others after all…"

He then pressed another button among the control panel, which appeared to trigger an electric spark to emerge from the portal through a connection leading to the activation lever. His eyes bulged, realizing that had never happened before. Quickly, he ran from the lab into the portal room. He stood by the lever and placed his hands around the top of it.

"C'mon... _c'mon!_ " he pleaded to himself as he pushed the lever with all of his strength.

Soon enough, the lever was pushed into place, which started a much of mechanical noises from the portal. Electric sparks began to conduct rapidly from the center hole just as it began to light up even brighter. Considering that what was taking place had never happened before in all the years he had attempted to restart the portal, he began to smile excitedly as he believed he finally managed to fix it.

"HAHA!  _YES!_ " he cheered happily, raising his fists in the air.

* * *

At that moment, the bright lights coming from the house began to grow even more intense as Valora entered the clearing it settled in. At the same time, the ground began to rumble more violently, throwing her off balance.

"Woah!" she exclaimed as the sudden rumbling of the ground caught her off-guard.

" _The light starting getting intense and the ground began to shake hard. Whatever was going on at that moment, I only then knew I had to get away. I tried to go back, but the light was so blinding and I couldn't keep myself steady on the ground._ "

As she backed up from the light, she stepped on the grassy edge of a nearby pit located around the border of the house's clearing. Taking a full step directly on the edge, the dirt beneath her foot quickly loosened, causing her to slip down to the ground with her leg hanging over the edge. With one quick fall on her face, the rest of body hung over the edge and gravity pulled her in, sending her falling down a dark, endless pit as she began to scream for her life.

" _That's when I made one wrong step that sent me falling down a seemingly bottomless hole._ "

* * *

_BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!_

"C'mon... _C'MON!_ " Stan yelled frustratedly at the beeping control panel, which flashed a red 'ERROR' sign in his face. "This is the closest I've gotten! DON'T MESS UP NOW!"

Suddenly, a machine with several different types of meters measuring different activities burst a fuse, which prompted a fire to start amongst it.

"What the-?!" Stan exclaimed as he turned toward the machine. His eyes then bulged in horror as he spotted the fire. "No... _NO!_ "

The bright light emitting from the portal started to grow even brighter. At the same time, the ground began to rumble even more violently, prompting Stan to fall over, holding himself onto the control panel. As he tried to climb up the machinery to look through the glass into the portal room, he heard the ongoing whirring noise from the attempted portal startup slowly reaching a dangerous volume.

His eyes widened as he looked up at the portal. "Uh oh…"

**_BOOM!_ **

The portal itself didn't explode, but a large amount of unstable electricity from the unprepared startup had built up inside, releasing all at once in one loud, powerful surge as the startup failed.

The surge sent a large stream of electric energy through every nearby cable in the portal room. The stream was large enough to travel through the circuiting from the basement up to the top of the house, traveling along metal wires until reaching the wind vane, where a large bolt shot up into the sky like reverse lightning. Heavy rain began to fall, coinciding with the electrical burst.

Inside the control room, Stan found himself lying on the floor, weakly trying to pull himself back up. His ears rung, unable to hear a thing following the loud burst that came from the portal. Surrounding him, all the machines that worked to power the portal had shut down with every emitting light going dark.

Still, he climbed himself back up to the main control panel and looked through the glass into the portal room to see if the attempted startup was any success. However, he quickly found that it wasn't, as right away, he could see the portal completely deactivated and not a single living soul to be seen emerging.

" _DAMMIT!_ " he shouted as he weakly dropped down to the floor. He slammed his fist on the ground several times out of frustration as his eyes welled up with tears, knowing that his attempt to bring his brother home was unsuccessful, yet again.

* * *

Present

Dipper and Mabel had walked alongside Valora as she told her story. From the original clearing where the Corduroy family tent lied thirteen years ago, they had spent a moderate amount of time walking over toward another clearing, albeit, one much more familiar to them. They first spotted the back porch of the Mystery Shack in the near-distance, but much closer toward the back of the clearing was the very hole that started Valora's troubles; and a familiar one, at that.

"The bottomless pit…" Mabel realized as she and her brother stared into the pit in sheer awe at the fact that Valora's history began at that spot.

Valora raised an eyebrow. "You two know what this thing is?"

"Kind of…" Dipper nodded. "I mean...it's complicated. Some of the things that fall in will pop right back out, but other things go God knows where. One time, we fell in there ourselves, but we were sent back after a while."

"We killed the time by telling stories," Mabel cheekily added.

"Man, I  _wish_ that had been the case for me," Valora told the two as she stood back and sat against the trunk of a tree. "But, I wasn't so lucky. Instead of coming back, I got sent somewhere far,  _far_ worse."

* * *

13 Years Ago

" _I fell for a while and expected to inevitably hit a ground of some sort. However, rather than hitting the ground, I was suddenly sent into zero gravity._ "

Valora opened her eyes as her heavy falling suddenly turned into weightlessness. The black darkness that once surrounded her had then turned into a spacey field of stars, galaxies, asteroids, and, oddly enough, bubbles. Following her fall, she remained terrified, but confusion began to strike her as she found herself as anything else other than a splat on the ground. Scanning the intergalactic field that surrounded her, she had no idea what to make of it.

" _Rather than falling...I was floating. Surrounded by asteroids and giant glowing bubbles in some sort of starfield. It felt like I was in space…_ "

" **HAHAHAHAHA!** "

" _...although, I think space would've been much more pleasurable…_ "

Valora then turned around to find herself slowly enveloped in the large shadow of a figure that rose up above her. Looking up at that figure, she identified it to be a glowing yellow triangle with arms, legs, a top hat, a bowtie, and a single eye that looked down at her. Her eyes bulged in horror as she realized the figure shared the same silhouette as the one she had seen through the tent.

" **WELL, WELL, WELL...WHO DO WE HAVE HERE?** " Bill Cipher questioned, voice full of amusement. " **VALORA HUNTER CORDUROY! BOY, LUCKY ME! OUT OF ALL THE PLACES YOU COULD'VE ENDED UP, YOU LANDED HERE! AIN'T THIS A TREAT?** "

" _At that moment, I recognized the creature from the carvings that Wendy made in a tree earlier. The monster from her nightmare…_ "

" **MAN, IT'S SO NICE TO COME FACE TO FACE WITH ICE BAG'S MOTHER!** " Bill went on as he floated in front of her. " **HOW IS SHE DOING ANYWAY? WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER KIDS? HOW ABOUT THAT NEWBORN YOU HAD JUST A FEW WEEKS BACK?** "

"What the…?" Valora questioned in a growing panic at the thought that a creature she had never seen before in a place she never knew even existed knew so much about who she was. "Who are you?!  _What_  are you?! And how do you know who I am?!"

" **OH, VALORA!** " Bill chuckled as he suddenly warped behind Valora, startling her. " **I KNOW LOTS OF THINGS! _LOTS OF THINGS!_** " he told her in dramatically slow and deep voice before turning back to normal. " **LIKE YOUR FAMILY, FOR ONE! PARTICULARLY, AND MOST INTERESTINGLY, YOUR** ' ** _LITTLE RED…'_** "

Her eyes widened in pure horror. "What do you want with my Wendy?!"

" **SHE INTERESTS ME, VALORA. AND FOR A BUNCH OF REASONS YOU WOULDN'T UNDERSTAND NOR WOULD I CARE TO EXPLAIN TO YOU** ," Bill told her in a more serious tone compared to his initial introduction. " **BUT SHE'S GROWING UP FAST, WOULDN'T YOU AGREE? I'M SURE YOU WOULD. ONLY SIX YEARS OLD AND SHE'S ALREADY ADDICTED TO HORROR MOVIES** ," he brought up as he kicked himself back relaxingly as if he was sitting on an invisible recliner. " **SUCH RESPONSIBLE PARENTING, HUH?** "

"What? I'm not even though one who allows her to watch horror movies!" Valora clarified in an angered tone.

" **OH, I KNOW!** " Bill revealed as he kicked himself back up. " **THAT ALL COMES FROM DADDY, RIGHT? WELL, GOOD ON HIM! HE'S DOING A GOOD JOB CORRUPTING THE LITTLE PUSHOVER! YOU, ON THE OTHER HAND, ARE TRYING TO TEACH HER SENSE!** " he said as he outstretched the natural length of his arm to point a finger at her. " **AND I CAN'T HAVE A KID WITH SENSE FOR MY FUTURE PLANS TO WORK! SO HOW DO I FIX THAT? BY CLEARING OL' MOMMA OUTTA THE WAY!** " He then turned around. " **AIN'T THAT RIGHT, GUYS?** "

Looking behind Bill, Valora spotted a bunch of other diverse monsters that sat on a floating asteroid. Barely able to catch sight of them, the monsters included a green creature with 8-balls for eyes, a turquoise keyhole, a similarly one-eyed shape creature like Bill, a red hexagon with a large mustache, a feminine creature covered in pink flames, a large-horned infant-like creature with a pacifier in its stomach, a living set of teeth, a creature composed of multiple connected squares, and one mighty purple behemoth.

They all laughed as they looked on at Valora, who began to grow infuriated by Bill and his threats against her and her family. She narrowed her eyes as she wielded her ax from her pocket, pushing her legs through the surrounding zero-gravity as she lunged at him.

"I'LL CLEAR  _YOU_ OUT OF MY WAY!" she shouted furiously as she held her ax in a ready position to swing as she shot herself at him.

However, as she lunged at Bill, he suddenly turned his eye into a working mouth, to which he then proceeded to effortlessly blow a stream of air at her, sending her flying in the opposite direction. She screamed as she flung backward, her ax falling out of her grasp and flinging closely alongside her. Eventually, her backside violently rammed into an orbiting asteroid. Her ax soon followed with the blade running straight into the right side of her long hair against the asteroid. While it had cut off a portion of her hair, the blade trapped most of it as it remained attached underneath where it met the rock, leaving her momentarily stuck as she attempted to pull it out in panic.

" **HAHAHA! YOU AMUSE ME, CORDUROY!** " Bill laughed as he floated right behind Valora, watching as she struggled to free her hair. " **THINKING YOU HAVE ANYWHERE _NEAR_ THE AMOUNT OF POWER THAT I DO HERE! SO CLUELESS! I ALMOST WANNA LEAVE YOU ALIVE JUST TO SEE WHAT OTHER ENTERTAINING METHODS OF ESCAPE YOU'LL TRY!**"

At that moment, Valora had quickly lost her tolerance for Bill's voice and used all her strength to pull the ax from the asteroid. Eventually, the blade tore straight out from the asteroid but unexpectedly flung straight out of her hands as she put her all into pulling it out. As a result, she had thrown the ax straight over her head, sending it quickly flying and piercing straight into Bill's eye before he had a moment to react.

" ** _AGGGHH!_** " he screamed in pain. His henchmaniacs continued to watch from their asteroid, gasping as they witnessed Valora's actions.

Valora was momentarily surprised to see an unintentional move of her's work in her favor. However, she did not want to try her luck and simply decided to take it as a moment to make her escape. Although, knowing how vital her ax might be in helping her get through wherever she was, she decided it was best to retrieve it first.

She proceeded to kick herself off of the asteroid, sending herself toward Bill's eye. As she landed on his tightened eyelid, she spotted the ax's small handle sticking out from in between the two lids and wrapped her hands around it. She swiftly tore it out, which prompted Bill to let out another agonized scream before she kicked herself off his eye and flew in the direction of a nearby asteroid field.

" **GAH!** " Bill shouted as he rubbed his injured eye, unable to see a thing. He aimlessly pointed off in the direction he assumed his henchmaniacs sat. " **HENCHMANIACS, GET HER! I NEED TIME TO REGENERATE ANOTHER EYE!** "

All of the henchmaniacs complied with their leader's request and all proceeded to jump off their asteroid, flying after Valora as she attempted to escape.

Valora looked behind her and quickly realized she was being chased down by the various creatures. Knowing well that she was clearly outnumbered and against a bunch of monsters that she had no idea of their capabilities, she hadn't dedicated a thought to the idea of trying to fight back. Instead, as she entered the field of asteroids, she sped herself up by repeatedly kicking herself off every single asteroid that her foot could touch, propelling her floating speed. At the same time, she tried to make sure that her back was constantly covered by the asteroids she passed as an attempt to throw the henchmaniacs off as they got closer.

Still, Bill's cronies all retained some level of knowledge as to where she was within the field. Though, their task at hunting her down was still made significantly more difficult with her actions. However, Kryptos, with the help of his natural flying ability, found himself closest to catching her, managing to catch up to the point where he was directly behind her.

" _DON'T WORRY, GUYS! I GOT HER!_ " Kryptos announced as he charged himself at her.

Without even looking back, Valora made the split-second decision to jump off a nearby asteroid, propelling herself downward rather than forward. Conveniently, another asteroid had floated right in front of her right before she redirected herself, which allowed Kryptos to crash directly into it.

" _OW…_ "

Valora glanced behind her as she continued to propel downwards, smirking as she spotted what her course change had done to Kryptos. The rest of the henchmaniacs continued to follow, but not at a distance nearly as close.

Turning her head back down, her eyes quickly bulged as she realized she was heading toward a small wormhole within the void. Panicking as she got closer to it, she began flailing her arms and kicking her feet downward in an attempt to slow herself down, though, she knew that she had no idea how to control herself within the laws of zero-g.

"Oh no…" she said to herself, growing incredibly fearful as she continued to near the wormhole. At that point, she braced herself, covering her face with her forearms as she prepared to enter the hole.

However, after a moment, she found herself to not have been sent anywhere and still remained floating through the same void. She turned her head back, and much to her surprise, she realized that she had actually managed to drift past the wormhole by a mere few inches. Realizing that luck had struck her yet again, she let out a sigh of relief.

"Phew…"

_SMACK!_

Not paying attention to what was in front of her, Valora's feeling of luck had finally been destroyed as she collided against the solid, rocky surface of a much more massive asteroid. She lay for a moment in slight pain, as the collision sent her tumbling against the rough surface, allowing her to garner plenty of scratches and scrapes against her skin. Soon enough, she pulled herself back onto her feet, taking a moment to process her small wounds before looking back up above her.

Looking around, she couldn't spot any of the henchmaniacs in immediate sight. She knew they had to still be after her though, but she also knew she couldn't keep floating around trying to get away from them. She had already wasted enough of her energy at that point.

She needed to hide. And conveniently, with the turn of her head, she spotted what appeared to be a small cavern inside a crater within the asteroid. Quickly, she jumped down into the crater, doing a zero-g roll as she hit the bottom before kicking herself up and running into the dark cavern for shelter.

Settling within the darkness, she still stood close enough to the cavern opening to see what was going on outside. Up above in the part of the asteroid field she had jumped down from, the wormhole she had barely managed to bypass suddenly disappeared. Afterward, several henchmaniacs came down and landed up the surface of the large asteroid, appearing confused as they looked around.

" _wHeRe'D sHE gO?_ " 8-Ball asked, scratching his head as he looked around.

"Great! You freaks lost her!" Pyronica frustratedly blamed as she looked over in the direction of the other creatures.

"Hey, don't call me a freak,  _freak!_ " Keyhole shouted back at her. In response, she proceeded to snap her fingers, effortlessly lighting him on fire. " _AHHHHH!_ "

" **GAH! YOU GUYS ARE USELESS!** " Bill yelled angrily as he rejoined his henchmaniacs after his eye regenerated. " **DID YOU NOT SEE THE WORMHOLE THAT JUST CLOSED RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU? IF SHE TOUCHED THAT, SHE COULD'VE GONE ANYWHERE!** "

"Well, that doesn't exclude all the dimensions that she could've gotten  _killed_  in!" Teeth tried to justify.

Kryptos thought for a moment. " _MAYBE SHE WAS SENT TO THE APEX ZONE! WE COULD STILL CHECK THERE!_ "

Bill let out an irritated sigh as he had heavy doubts about Kryptos' suggestion. Still, he gave into the possibility and proceeded to rip open a new wormhole with his hands. " **I SWEAR, IF SHE'S NOT THERE, THEN _ALL OF YOU_**   **ARE GOING TO KNOW HOW IT FEELS TO HAVE AN AX STUCK IN YOUR EYE!** "

Bill then proceeded to float into the wormhole, leaving it open for the others. Some let out annoyed sighs as they proceeded to follow him inside, knowing well that the Valora being in the Apex Zone was an incredibly slim and unlikely chance.

Keyhole narrowed his eyes as he put out the remains the flames that Pyronica had set upon him, pouting before entering the portal. "Ya know. Sometimes, Bill's just the worst."

Pyronica carelessly kicked him into the wormhole. "Just follow his orders, ya walkin' lock."

The rest of the henchmaniacs then followed behind, with Zanthar being the last one due to his enormous size. The wormhole immediately shut afterward and they were all gone, allowing Valora to take let out another sigh of relief as she was finally left alone.

"Thank God…" she said to herself as she slumped back against the wall of the asteroid cavern.

"WHO GOES THERE?!"

"AHH!" Valora screamed as she suddenly found a purple flaming torch being waved right in front of her by a small, furry creature.

The creature looked particularly wartorn; like they had just come from a battlefield. It also had a large beard and a robot arm while also wearing a bandana, an eyepatch, and a bandolier over its right shoulder. One glance and one would assume it's some sort of futuristic pirate guinea pig.

The creature studied her for a brief moment before coming to a shocking realization.

"A human…?" he questioned in surprise. "We haven't had a human around here since…"

_SCREEEE!_

The creature looked up and outside the cavern entrance, noticing a string of eye-bats flying along in the near distance.

"That's not good…" he remarked as he looked at eye-bats making growing nearer to their asteroid.

"Um, hi there," Valora greeted, grabbing the creature's attention again. "Look, I've only been here for a few minutes now, and in those same few minutes, I've been through quite a lot, and now, I'm kind of stuck in this weird place between absolute confusion and aching trauma." She then stood up in front of the creature, holding her ax up threateningly to it. "So I'd appreciate if you'd tell me now whether or not you're going to try to kill me so I know whether or not I should take precaution."

"No, lass! Please!" the creature cried out, holding its hands up innocently. "I ain't here t' hurt ye!"

_SCREEEE!_

"But I can't fer those eye-bats if they lay their eye on ye," it then claimed, gesturing over to the screeching eye-bats as they continued to fly close to their asteroid.

"Eye-bats?" Valora questioned as she looked outside.

"Come on, lass," the creature then grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her along with him as he moved further into the cavern. "They be the death o' us if we don't move."

Much to her surprise, despite his short height and almost feeble-looking appearance, she found that he was actually strong enough to pull her along with him through the cavern. Though she hesitated following, as she obviously had no reason to trust him. But his claim that he wouldn't hurt her also came off as the nicest offer she had been given since she had arrived at wherever she was. So despite her strong skepticism, she gave in to see where things would lead.

* * *

Moments later, Valora sat in the back of the cave beside a purple fire. She wasn't alone, however, as she sat beside the fire with three other creatures who looked to have been similarly beaten and torn up at points in the past like the guinea-pirate. They also wielded a variety of different weapons and kept ammo on them as well.

One of the creatures was a short pig-like creature with three nostrils and a scar over its eye. Another was a spiny-headed creature with a cloak and an alien-looking harpoon gun. Lastly, there was a taller creature with a long neck and big eyes that also appeared to have one of its arms wrapped in a cast.

To her surprise, they barely paid any attention to her in comparison to how many times she glanced around at them. Since settling by the fire beside them, none of them had spoken a word. They all simply sat around the purple flames, warming up, whereas the guinea-pirate creature stood back by the cavern entrance to watch out for eye-bats.

"Looks like we be in th' clear fer now," he suddenly spoke, breaking the silence. He then walked further down into the cavern, joining her and the other creatures by the fire. His eyes immediately turned to her, which was the first time she felt anybody looked over at her in the past fifteen minutes. "How are ye feelin', lass?"

"I don't know…" she admitted, looking down as she still tried to process her situation. "I mean, I have no idea where I am or who you are or what you are…"

"Ah, forgive me then," he replied as he walked over to a rock beside her and sat down. "Allow me to introduce meself. Name's Guineabeard, I'm a Guinea Pigrate, and you're in the Nightmare Realm."

Even after a moment of processing the information he had given her, she still found nothing to help her confusion. "That...doesn't really help."

"Well, how  _can_  we help?" Guineabeard asked.

"Well, first of all, are you deliberately talking with a pirate voice or is that just your natural accent?" Valora questioned, his voice admittedly started to get to her.

Guineabeard narrowed his eyes somewhat annoyedly as he sighed. "That be my normal voice, lass. Every Pigrate talks like a pirate…"

"Oh. My bad…" she awkwardly took back. "Alright, well, real question then - what's the Nightmare Realm?"

"It sounds exactly how it be," Guineabeard explained with a mournful expression. "A place where nightmares live 'n hopes die. Taken o'er long, long ago by a terrifyin' yellow triangle who sounds like an ole-timey huckster. Th' one that it seems like ye barely managed t' escape."

"Oh,  _that_  yellow triangle," Valora realized. "I was beginning to think that was some sort of common species around here or something."

"Thankfully not," Guineabeard replied. "He goes by th' name Bill Cipher - demon o' dreams 'n lover o' chaos. Him 'n his mates run this ship 'n jus' about all o' their actions are done purely fer amusement. He runs this ship like 'tis his own personal funfair. "

"How did you guys get here?"

"We're asteroid miners where we come from," the pig-like creature spoke up for the first time. "But, our ship fell into a wormhole and wound up here. "

"That's right," Guineabeard nodded. "Anythin' that gets lost in th' multiverse gets sent t' th' Nightmare Realm. Which explains how ye got here."

"I fell into an endless hole in the ground…" Valora brought up with a raised eyebrow.

"And got lost, didn't ya?" Guineabeard pointed out, which Valora couldn't really argue with. "Anyway, that's how we be here. We've been stuck here fer ages, usin' large asteroid craters like this one fer shelter as we try t' hide from Bill 'n his minions."

"But we can't remain here forever," the spiny-headed creature spoke up. "And neither can Bill."

"Indeed. The Nightmare Realm is fallin' apart" Guineabeard revealed as he turned back to Valora. "Bein' as lawless as 'tis, it's destined t' collapse at some point in th' future. Fer that reason, Bill is searchin' fer a new dimension t' rule. And he seems t' 'ave taken interest in  _yer world._ "

Valora's eyes bulged. "My world?"

" _I scanned you when you first came in_ ," the long-necked alien with an arm cast told her, holding up an intricate device of some sort with his other hand. " _You come from Dimension 46'\\._ "

"Dimension 46'\\...th' same one as the last human…" Guineabeard realized.

"Hang on, so, you've had another human from my dimension that's been here?" Valora asked him.

"Yes. A determined male wit' six-fingers who had allowed Bill into his mind afore, unaware o' his motives," he explained to her. "He left us, pledgin' that if he couldn't return home, then in time, he'd return here t' destroy Cipher 'n save us all from th' grasp o' th' Nightmare Realm." He then sighed dejectedly. "That was twenty-one years ago..."

Valora looked on sympathetically. "...and he never returned?"

Guineabeard hesitated to explain for a moment. "No. But, we don't know where exactly he went or if he be dead or alive," he admitted. "He said he would go throughout th' multiverse 'til he was prepared. But there are many places one can go in th' multiverse. And many places one can be captured, jailed, enslaved, or scuttled. Whatever his fate may be, we don't know it. But we haven't heard from him since he left. And while we'd be grateful if we learned he was still out there tryin' t' achieve his goals, it's been far too long fer us t' continue t' rely on 'im. Which be unfortunate. A wise scallywag he was, but alas, he was still only a human."

"We'll likely be stuck here forever," the spiny-headed creature claimed sorrowly. "To die along with the realm itself in years' time."

"What? No, no, no! We can't be stuck here forever!" Valora refused, suddenly standing up before the four. "We need to get out of here! And I don't mean to sound self-centered or anything, but  _I_ need to get out of here! I have a family! Four kids! I can't be stuck here to rot in some sort of... _wormhole dimension_  that they have no idea about! They'll think I'm dead!"

"You think you're alone?" the pig-like creature asked as it glanced in her direction.

He then pulled out what appeared to be a small photograph from its robe, holding it up for her to see. Looking at it, she saw it was a picture of him from what looked to be many years ago, alongside a bunch of similar looking pig creatures of various sizes, representing a potential family.

"I haven't seen my family in nearly twenty-five years," he revealed. "A wife and seven kids. Three boys, four girls. All without a clue as to what happened to me all that time ago. Hell, at this point, they've probably all forgotten about me. But I still think of them every day. About what I remember them as and what they might've become."

" _I had a brother back on my world_ ," the long-neck creature chimed in. " _Alongside my mining job, I ran a popular interdimensional taco-selling business with him. Considering I was the one who made the tacos, I have doubts that it's even around nowadays._ "

"I had a brother too, although, we weren't close at all. In fact, I killed him," the spiny-headed creature also chimed in. Everybody else proceeded to turn in his direction with disturbed looks in response to his addition. "What?" he questioned innocently as he glanced between the other creatures. "We've been over this before! How I caught him with my wife, remember?"

"Err...right…" Guineabeard recalled, nodding his head uncomfortably. "Anyway, as fer me family, they were asteroid miners alongside us as well." He then sighed, looking down at his clenched robot prosthetic arm with grief. "However, they weren't so fortunate amongst our initial escape attempts from Bill…"

Valora's eyes widened in surprise at his implication before giving him a remorseful look. "Oh...I'm  _so_ sorry…" Her head then turned toward the others. "...for all of you...except, maybe Thorn-Skull over here. You seem to be living it up."

"Eh," he shrugged. "Can't say I have any regrets."

"Look, I can see you all have already had it way worse than I can even begin to complain about," Valora acknowledged as she looked around at the others. "But, that doesn't change my stance. I can't just accept the fact that I'm stuck and just stay here for the rest of my life. I mean, this other guy from my dimension that you said came before me twenty-one years ago...you said he left this place! So, what's stopping  _me_ or  _any of us_  from being able to leave either?"

"Risk is," Guineabeard replied. "Ye see, that human exited th' Nightmare Realm through one o' th' random wormholes that often spawn as a result o' th' realm's instability."

Conveniently, at that very moment, another wormhole suddenly formed a short distance outside of the cavern entrance. Eyes from everyone inside the cavern turned outside, looking on at it as it floated, self-circulating in the air.

"You mean...those wormholes?" Valora asked, recognizing it as a similar one to the one she had almost fallen into a moment ago when escaping from the henchmaniacs.

"Yes," Guineabeard nodded. "Th' trouble wit' them be that they're mighty temporary 'n can send ye  _anywhere_ in th' multiverse. Ye could end up in an endless sea o' sharks or in a blank void wit' no oxygen t' breathe."

"Or a dimension ruled by giant spiders that shoot lava instead of webs."

"Or a dimension where everyone and everything has giant cat heads."

" _Or a Parallel Earth that looks exactly like yours, except no one actually knows who you are._ "

"Or maybe, if you're the luckiest lass in th' multiverse, you'll end up bein' sent straight back t' yer own dimension. Though, I can tell ye right now that that th' chances o' that are as slim as can be," Guineabeard told her. "Th' point be - wit' those wormholes, ye don't know where you'll end up. There's a reason that even Bill himself doesn't dare t' take such risk either. While there be plenty o' better places t' be outside o' th' Nightmare Realm, there's potential fer far worse in some cases."

"They're also unpredictably unstable," the pig-like creature added. "One time, one of our fellow miner refugees tried to make their own escape through one, but it closed on him before he could even get his entire body through. One half of his remained here and the other half ended up another random dimension."

Valora thought for a moment as she stared at the wormhole, considering the fact that she could reach it within a minute if she wanted to. "But, it's still a ticket out of here, right?"

Guineabeard looked up at her with a growing dread. "Lass, the man before ye was mighty smart…"

"And what? You're saying I'm not?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"What? No!" he shook his head. "I just...there's  _a lot_  t' learn when it comes t' navigating the multiverse."

"Then I'll learn."

"Tis not that simple, lass!" Guineabeard tried to persuade.

"Look, maybe I'm not some wiseguy with a strong passion to kill a demon triangle," she began as she took some steps toward the cavern exit. "But I'm a mother of four beautiful children. And they're  _my_ passion. And I'd rather die trying to get back to them instead of sitting around doing nothing for years until I die along with a rotting dimension."

Guineabeard looked at her momentarily before exchanging looks with the other three refugees, all of them sharing the same amount of dread and fear. He then sighed as he turned back and walked toward her.

"You do what you must, lass. We can't control ye," Guineabeard simply said as he approached her, taking out a device from his pocket and holding it out to her. "Take this fer yer quest. I be sure it'll be useful."

She looked down at the device in his hand, which looked akin to a bracelet or small wristwatch. Taking it from his hands, she held it up in front of her to more closely examine it. Looking at the small display screen attached to it, she read the word 'translator' as it popped up. She grew confused as she looked on at it, but decided to pocket it anyway, taking his word that it could provide use at some point. Whenever she actually figures it out that is.

"But jus' as we told th' last human…" Guineabeard continued. "...th' chance o' ye ever gettin' back home t' yer family be slim."

Valora stared at him for a moment, processing this thought. She had no doubts that the potential journey she was setting herself upon could involve a long, rough road of returning home, with no guarantee she'll even reach her desired destination. But still, as she said, she'd rather fail at trying to make it back home rather than never even attempting to head back in the first place.

"It's still a chance," she simply replied before turning around and proceeding to walk out of the cavern.

"But I do have one question," Guineabeard called out to her, prompting her to turn around one last time. "If ye do manage t' complete yer journey...'n somehow along th' way, ye discover how t' help bring us back t' our own homes too...will ye come back fer us? If...no one else does?"

Valora briefly looked on at him, processing his question, which obviously came off as more of a request. But considering they had been the only ones to take her in and provide any sort of assistance since her arrival into the Nightmare Realm, along with the fact that some of them had their own families like her, she had developed a sense of compassion for them and would feel dreadful for not even bothering to come back and help if she had the opportunity to.

"Of course," she told them with a smile. "And if that triangle is still around, then I'll nail him into the damn ground if I have to."

With this response, Guineabeard and the other three miners gave her grateful smiles.

"Praise the Axolotl, lass," Guineabeard told her as he and the others waved her goodbye.

She didn't have a clue what those words meant, but remembering that they were all a bunch of various creatures that came from different worlds, she just took it as some foreign form of goodbye. She waved back at them before lightly kicking herself off the ground, letting the lack of gravity do the rest of the work in propelling her upward toward the ongoing wormhole.

Despite her courage of wanting to return to her family, her fear of the potential dangers and possibilities that were to come still remained. As Guineabeard told her, the wormhole could take her anywhere. For all she knew, she could jump through and fall straight into an active volcano and that would be the immediate end of her. However, she chose not to think like that and just hoped that wherever she would end up, it would be somewhere where her journey was doable.

And so, she closed her eyes and braced herself as she made contact with the wormhole, being immediately sucked in and sent out of the Nightmare Realm. The miners remained in their spot within the cavern, continuing to look on as she warped away. The wormhole itself soon diminished after.

" _And I was off…_ "

* * *

Present

"You...met Bill Cipher?" Dipper asked, shocked that Valora had once been in confrontation with their greatest enemy.

"You kids know about  _him_ too?" Valora questioned before quickly coming to a realization based on a detail she remembered. "Wait, what am I saying? You two are related to Stanford.  _Of course_  you'd know."

"Not only that, but he was, like, our biggest enemy during our first summer here," Dipper told her. "He entered our other uncle's mind, he tricked me into switching bodies…"

"...bringing us the literal apocalypse is probably worth mentioning," Mabel added.

"I was getting to that…"

"He did all of that?" Valora asked, shocked to learn about the progress Bill had managed to make in time. "What did you do?"

"Well, we eventually stopped him," Dipper explained. "But as it turns out, we just recently found out that he reformed in our Grunkle Stan's mind and is essentially sharing it with him."

"Now, Ford's trying to figure out how to clear him without damaging Stan's mind or erasing it again like we did the first time," Mabel explained further.

"Bill's still alive, huh? Interesting…" Valora said, narrowing her eyes as she looked to the side to process this revelation.

"Speaking of Ford…" Dipper brought up, going on a slight tangent from the general topic of Bill. "How'd you two wind up crossing paths within the large span of the multiverse?"

"Quit jumping ahead, Dipper! Let her continue your story!" Mabel told him as she turned back toward Valora. "What kind of dimension did you end up in? Did you end up somewhere terrifying? Like into a volcano or an ocean full of sharks? Or maybe a dimension full of unicorns? That'd be the worst!"

"Actually, where I ended up was significantly less interesting..." Valora replied. "At least at first glance. I was sent directly to one of the multiverse's greatest science institutions. An entire dimension based around the study of advanced science and the dynamics of the multiverse, which, as a result, made it one of the more technologically advanced places in the multiverse."

"Ugh, that sounds like one of Dipper's nerd fantasies," Mabel groaned, growing immediately uninterested at the mention of the study of advanced science. Dipper narrowed his eyes in her direction.

"I admit, it's not the most exciting place to talk about," Valora agreed. "But, I think it's worth mentioning considering that it's pretty much how I ended up becoming as knowledgeable about the other dimensions as I am now. I mean, back in high school, I was never crazy about pretty much any subject. Hell, I hardly paid attention to  _any_  of my teachers. But, I guess when getting back to your family relies on it, you kind of realize that paying attention is essential."

"So, you  _did_ learn," Dipper said as he listened.

"For years," she nodded. "Most of my time was spent in that dimension just to learn as much as I possibly could. And as someone who was never a science wiz beforehand, I gotta say that learning so much about it has allowed me to do things I had never thought I'd be able to do. I could construct, I could analyze, I could hypothesize…"

"Agggh! No! Please!" Mabel pleaded as she covered her ears. "You have so many cool credits going for you! Don't wash them down the drain with  _nerd talk!_ "

" _Mabel!_ " Dipper snapped at her annoyedly.

"I'm just saying - I learned a lot," Valora summed up with a chuckle at her reaction. "But eventually, I learned enough. With everything I had come to know about other dimensions and the various elements, parts, and pieces that can be obtained from them, I thought up a blueprint for a device that I would design to send me home. At the time, I deemed it a simple portal back to this dimension. But before making it, I'd jump through more wormholes and multiversal leaks to travel across other dimensions to gain parts to build it."

"You stole parts?" Dipper asked.

"Occasionally," Valora nodded. "I got most of my parts legitimately. But I had to bend the law sometimes to get some things I couldn't get any other way. One of the key things I stole was an interdimensional power core, which I actually got with the help of your great uncle Stanford."

"Who better than to come to for stealing parts than the multiverse's greatest thief?" Mabel asked with a smile at the thought.

"Right," Valora nodded with a chuckle at how true her words were. "His 'Wanted' poster was everywhere. He got away with much more than you'd think someone could handle."

"And how'd that meeting go?" Dipper asked.

"It wasn't anything too story-worthy, honestly," Valora told them. "It was about seven years ago in the Bidding Dimension, which was the easiest place to get an interdimensional power core," Valora began. "Other places within the multiverse hold them under tight security of the time police, who typically try to keep balance within the multiverse alongside their time anomaly duties. Interdimensional power cores aren't allowed in the hands of average individuals. The Bidding Dimension, however, was run by corrupt officials who strayed away from time police jurisdiction. Essentially, a dimension that tried to maintain slight rule despite breaking the major laws of the multiverse itself."

"I feel like that could sum up a lot of places in the multiverse," Dipper said. "Feels like whenever Ford talked about the multiverse with us, one of the most common words he'd use is  _'corrupt'_."

"There's a lot of dimensions and every one is different," Valora simply stated. "We rode different paths throughout, so, perhaps he fared worse than I had. However, I would agree that there are plenty of corrupt spaces across the multiverse. It certainly hasn't gotten any better considering the current state of Time Police Jurisdiction, which has seemed to be locked in a battle over authority for the past four years."

"Time politics…gee, and I thought Earth politics sounded like a hassle," Mabel claimed as she looked over at Dipper.

"Anyway, I crossed paths with Stanford in the Bidding Dimension after losing the nightly bid for the interdimensional power core," she continued. "We figured out who each other were and that we both came from the same dimension. We told each other our separate histories – his of how he fell into a portal he constructed and mine of falling into the bottomless pit, as you two call it. Feeling bad for me getting separated from my family, he led me to the storage room where they kept the power core and convinced me to steal it while he got a weapon handle for something he was designing for himself. Though by that point, we were being hunted down by the center's security and so we had to make a quick break for it. Luckily, there was a wormhole outside the center that we decided to jump through. But because of the physics and unpredictability of the wormholes, we ended up getting sent in separate directions and never saw each other again."

"Aw, my heart!" Mabel shouted, saddened by the tale. "And I was just starting to really ship you two together!"

"Mabel, she's married…" Dipper reminded her while giving her a look.

"I know…" Mabel admitted sorrowly. "But I mean...what really are the rules behind that? I know there's no official divorce papers or anything, but your family never really figured out what happened to you, so doesn't that mean Manly Dan's able to get back at it again?"

"Mabel!" Dipper yelled in a warning tone.

"I'm being serious! It's a legitimate question!" Mabel assured him. "Like, if I had a terrible husband and he disappears one day and I have no idea what happened to him after several years, am I not allowed to hit the field again because that's still being unfaithful?"

"Mrs. Corduroy, I'm so sorry," Dipper apologized for his sister as he turned back to Valora. "Mabel tends to get crazy ideas when she enters her shipping zone."

"Not joking! Real question here!" Mabel continued to enforce, to which Dipper responded with an annoyed facepalm.

Valora just looked on at the twins in utter confusion. "I'm still just trying to figure what 'shipping' means…"

"Trust me, you  _don't_ want to know," Dipper assured her. "How about you just keep telling the rest of your story? Like after you and Ford got split up, did you continue to steal parts for your portal home?"

"Only when I had to," Valora replied. "Stealing parts wasn't really my thing. Particularly because I gained more experience from the work I had done to obtain them legitimately. In other cases, high ranking officials of certain dimensions would task me with jobs. In exchange for their completion, they'd give me the parts that I needed. The jobs usually included stuff like designing armor and weapons. One time, I designed a set of reproducible battle gear for an army during an ongoing world war on 533\\+." She sighed as she thought back to how disturbing the dimension was. "Colonies of tiny people that had no hair on their body except for their giant mustaches.  _Yes_ , even the women. But, they were sitting on the goldmine of nanotechnology and provided me with a surplus for my assistance."

Dipper examined her suit, remembering her retracting helmet from earlier. "Let me guess - you used it to design your suit?"

She glanced down at her suit before smirking at him. "Well, the suit wasn't what I needed the nanotech for. At that point in time, I had made adjustments to my initial portal schematic and realized I could design a portable gateway using programmed nanobots. But considering that the number of bots I was given was way more than the amount that I needed, it gave me a better idea of what to do with it."

She then had the nanomechanical suit assemble her blue-visored helmet around her head. At the same time, various nanobots shifted around her arms, rapidly constructing different types of weapons, along with a brief glance at the arm cannon she had threatened them with earlier. Along with that, bots seemed to briefly form a set of thrusters on her back, which seemed to imply the suit had flight capabilities as well.

Eventually, the nanobots stopped shifting around and reset into standard, defenseless positions with her helmet disassembling again.

"That's where the suit came into play," she said with an amused shrug.

"Woah…" the twins said in awe at the suit's many functions.

" _Mhm_ ," Valora nodded in agreement with their awe. "The suit ended up merging with the initial portal idea. And instead of a portal, I just installed the interdimensional power core into the suit itself."

"So, similar to how you teleported us all earlier, you can basically teleport yourself across dimensions with the touch of a button?" Dipper asked.

"Just about."

"So by the time the suit was done, you could finally come back home, right?" Mabel asked, eagerly waiting for her to conclude her story.

Valora stared at her for a moment, a frown suddenly growing upon her face. She then turned her head down with sorrow, which provoked looks of concerns from the twins.

She sighed. "Yeah," she nodded, eyes still staring at the ground. "I did go home."

* * *

3 Years Ago

[Dimension 46'\\]

_VYOOM!_

There was a bright blue flash up in the air within the woods of Gravity Falls on a Saturday afternoon. Valora's silhouette was rendered for a moment before she suddenly flashed in, falling from the air and doing a front roll as she hit the ground. She quickly stood back up and analyzed her surroundings. She triggered her helmet to disassemble into nanotech as she looked down at her wrist with frustrated eyes.

"Agggh, dammit! I overshot the jump  _again_ , didn't I?" she shouted to herself as she tapped her finger on a holographic display that projected from her wrist, soon learning that she had overloaded her multiversal teleporter. "I told myself not to tap too fast! Yet here I am, making the same misjudgments that I made before. Now, I gotta spend thirty minutes waiting in another parallel Earth before I can head back-"

She cut herself off as she read a screen on her holographic display, which projected the name of the dimension she sat in. Her eyes widened as she read  _46'\_  off the display, realizing she wasn't actually on another parallel Earth.

She was on  _her_ Earth.

"I-I'm... _I'm home…_ " she stuttered in disbelief as she began to tremble anxiously. "After all these years, I'm finally  _home_."

She then looked up from her wrist and saw that through the trees, there was a familiar wooden cabin sitting, secluded within the surrounding woods. The familiarity had settled in and she realized almost immediately that she was staring directly at her family's cabin. When traveling around the other parallel Earths that she had accidentally sent herself to, she had already found convenience in warping all around Gravity Falls. However, upon arriving in her own dimension, she had found herself most conveniently stood right next to her house. Her situation couldn't have felt any better.

"Looks like my luck finally came back," she remarked to herself with a smile.

Without waiting any further, she began walking through the woods toward the cabin. As she walked along, she began to grow a sense of familiarity with the surroundings itself. The feeling of walking through those woods. It hadn't changed a bit. It felt like she had never left.

That feeling quickly went away as she looked back at the cabin and stopped walking. From her current position on the edge of the surrounding woods beside a tree, she spotted someone sitting alone in the red chair on the front porch. Quickly, she identified the man as her husband, Dan, who looked like he had gotten slightly larger since she last remembered. But other than that, he looked just like the man that she married.

" _Dan…_ " she said to herself with an emotional smile. "How I've missed you and the insanity you and the boys brought. Though, I never thought I'd see you as a man quietly sitting out on the front porch by himself," she noted as she continued to look on at him. "Hmph. Maybe he's calmed down over the years."

_Honk! Honk!_

Valora's eyes then glanced over to the side as she spotted an unfamiliar car pull up to the front of the house. As it passed by, she was barely able to make out the sight of a female driver.

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Dan, I swear to God, if you remarried, I'm going to...do nothing because it's been several years and I can't blame him..."

"Hey dad!" greeted a teenage girl as she proceeded to step out from the car.

If the girl calling Dan 'dad' hadn't said enough, then her appearance would've made the connection for her, as Valora was almost immediately able to identify her daughter from her looks alone. The long red hair as it flowed out from her pine tree cap, her pale, freckled face, and her green flannel shirt. It was the look of a Corduroy's daughter, and she fit it great.

While seeing Dan again made her slightly emotional, she wasn't prepared for the feelings that hit her when she saw Wendy. The last time she had seen her, she was six years old. Now, she was a full-fledged teenager with driving capabilities.

"My baby girl…" she said to herself tearfully as she looked at her from the distance. "All grown up…"

Despite the distance between her and the two on the porch, she was still able to clearly hear every word that they would converse with one another. Although, that was mostly due to the fact that she had a built-in sound catcher within her suit that could project distant sounds from wherever she was looking at for her to hear.

Dan looked up at Wendy and raised an eyebrow. "What're you doing home so early?"

"Soos wanted to go play a new video game he bought so he closed shop and let me off early for the day," she asked as she walked up onto the porch and sat beside him on the chair's armrest. "You know how it is."

"I see," he calmly replied, eyes then glancing over at her car. "How's the car?"

"Still working," she said with a smile, thinking back to how she had just gotten the car for her sixteenth birthday a few weeks back. "Though, the whole thing about paying for my own gas is starting to take a toll on me. Now I see why you always yell at the newspaper when the prices rise a few cents."

"Yeah, it's...troubling," he quietly nodded as he glanced over to the side, his expression mournful.

Wendy caught his expression and immediately knew something was wrong. "You alright, dad?"

"I'm fine," Dan assured as he looked back up at her. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, for one, you're actually calm for once," she pointed out. "That usually means  _something's_ up."

Dan sighed, accepting her acknowledgment of his mood at that moment. "It's that time of the year again."

"Really?" she asked, believing to have an idea of what he was referring to based on past experience. "I thought Aunt Linda only came over for Thanksgiving?"

"What? No, not  _that_  time of the year," Dan quickly cleared up.

"Oh. Then, what're you talking about then?"

He hesitated to reply at that moment for a number of reasons. But considering the time frame, he also had no reason not to just be honest and remind her of what the day was about. It was a day that had affected her after all.

"Today marks the tenth year since your mother disappeared."

 _Ten years?!_  Valora thought to herself as she processed this revelation.  _EXACTLY ten years?!_

She glanced down at her wrist, projecting the holographic display from before. Quickly, she tapped her way to a screen that displayed the current date of the dimension she was in.

Saturday, March 23rd, 2013

Ten years ago from that day, she had been separated from her family.

Ten years ago from that day, she had fallen into the Nightmare Realm.

Ten years ago from that day, she embarked on her journey to return home.

Ten. Whole. Years.

When she first began her journey home, she had attempted to keep track of every day that went by so she could add it all up as time passed. However, to her, hours flew by like minutes and weeks flew by like days. She remembered a time where she thought that she had gone several hours without sleep, but it had really turned out to be five days.

Time had quickly become a lost idea to her as she traveled the multiverse, to the point where she wouldn't really care to question what day of the week it was unless she was in a situation that called for such knowledge. But, she generally stopped keeping track of it pretty early on in her journey. She knew that by the time she stood back in her dimension, it had been years. But, to figure out she had finally returned  _exactly_  ten years later was mind-boggling to her. Both due to the  _amount_  of time and the  _precision_  of her timing.

Looking back up at Dan and Wendy, she saw Wendy was still processing this revelation herself. Apparently, she hadn't realized until Dan told her that it was the ten-year anniversary of her mother's disappearance. Though, her expression didn't say much even after being reminded of day's infamy.

"I tried not to let it get to me today, but...I just couldn't help but think about her," Dan told her as he stuffed his face in his hands sadly. "And how it's been so long."

Wendy continued to sit on the armrest, thinking, until she looked on at him somewhat annoyedly. "Dad, it's been ten years...and you're  _still_  not over it?"

Valora's mouth opened in slight shock as she overheard her. Along with shock, the words also felt like she had taken a punch to the heart.

Dan appeared to be shocked by her words too as he turned back to her. " _Over it?_  Wendy, she was my  _wife._ "

"Yeah, and she was my  _mom_ ," Wendy spoke back, eyes narrowing. "Yet, you don't see me still crying about her. Ten years is ten years, dad. At some point, it was time for me to move on. And at some point, so do  _you_ ," she bluntly told him as her tone progressively grew angrier despite her dad's lack of response. "We can't keep thinking about her! Whatever happened to her  _happened_ , and we just gotta accept that,  _okay?_ "

Dan stared at her in utter-disbelief at every word that left her mouth. "I thought you  _loved_ your mother…"

"I  _did!_ " she angrily confirmed as she got down from the armrest and stood right in front of him. "But I've already accepted the fact that she's  _gone!_ "

"You don't know what happened to her!" Dan argued as he suddenly stood up from his chair, towering over her.

"Neither do you!" Wendy shouted back, pointing a finger at him. "What? Do you think she's still  _alive?_ "

Dan crossed his arms as he turned away from her. "I don't know. But, sometimes, I like to think she's still around somewhere."

"Well, I don't! In fact, I think I'd prefer if she was  _dead!_ "

Valora let out a trembling gasp as her daughter's unkind and brash words practically shot her in the heart, crushing her immensely.

Dan turned back to her with wide eyes that suddenly went angry. "HOW COULD YOU SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!"

"What would  _you_  say if one day, after all this time, she showed up right at our doorstep?  _Huh?!_ What would  _you_ do?!" she asked him. "You wanna know what  _I'd_ say? I'd ask, 'Where the  _hell_ have you been after all these years? Why'd you leave us? Why'd you leave  _all_ of your kids behind when they were so young? Why'd you leave  _me?_  And did you really think you could just walk right back home to us after abandoning us for all these years? After we've spent a whole year searching for any possible trace of you? I thought you were DEAD and you think you have the nerve to come back and say you've been alive all this time?!  _ALL THIS TIME?!_  WELL, TOUGH LUCK, MOM! YOU'RE TEN YEARS TOO LATE! I'M SIXTEEN YEARS OLD NOW AND I DON'T NEED YOU ANYMORE!'"

Dan silently stared at Wendy as she began to take heavy breaths after her frustrated rant. His face displayed utter shock as he processed every single livid word that came out from his daughter's mouth. He almost had no idea what to make of it.

Valora had already become teary-eyed before she watched her daughter go on a large rant. But as she finished, those tears had already begun streaming down her face as she processed the painful heartbreak she felt inside at the fact that her one-and-only daughter now abhorred her. Even after the bond that the two had shared when she was only a child.

She should've figured this is how she'd feel after ten years. The frustration of not knowing what had happened to her own mother or whether she was dead or alive. How exactly she planned on walking back into her and the rest of their family's lives again after so long had completely escaped her mind throughout her journey. Her entire quest to return home was simply fueled by her want to see her family again. Never had she considered about how she'd end up reuniting herself with them or even how she'd explain her situation, for that matter.

But in the end, she completed her journey home and got exactly what she wanted after so long, and that was seeing her family again. Some of them, at least.

Though, as much as she wanted to see her other boys again, she couldn't bear to stick around much longer that day after hearing Wendy. Despite how justified she felt her daughter's feelings were, they still hurt her terribly. She just couldn't hear anymore and she wouldn't. She was already broken inside. Any more would just be beating at an already dying soul.

She put up her holographic display and tapped through it fast as she tried to maintain the least bit of emotional composure she had left in her at that moment. She found that her multiversal teleporter was still overloaded, and so she still wasn't able to get away from the dimension just yet. But, her normal teleporter was still functional.

So, with the press of a button on her wrist, she proceeded to warp away from her current position to a good distance away from her family's residence within the middle of the woods, where she lied back against a tree and stuff her head in her knees as she sobbed peacefully to herself.

* * *

Present

Finishing up the story, a tear streamed down the side of Valora's face, which she promptly wiped with the back of her hand. It was always the hardest memory for her to think about in such great detail, even despite the few years that have passed since. Still, she tried to maintain as strong of a composition as she could despite her emotion visible to the twins.

"When my multiversal teleporter starting working again, I left this dimension and thought about what to do with my life next," she continued. "That's when I remembered the dying Nightmare Realm and how I had promised to return there to help the refugees get home if Ford didn't already. Coming back, I learned that the realm had managed to grow even  _more_  unstable in the ten years since I left it. With refugees from various dimensions still scattered throughout, I decided to make it my mission to help people get back to their own dimensions as the realm continued to decay. People praised me for what I did, but I never did it for a reputation. I did because it gave me a purpose. If I couldn't be there for my family, then at least, I could help others be there for theirs." She sighed as she looked back up at the twins, with a slight, yet, poignant smile. "So, yeah. That's my story."

Mabel had her mouth covered with her hands as she looked on at Valora with utter remorse for her. "Oh my God…"

Dipper, himself, also felt deeply sorry for what she had been through, still unable to process Wendy's explained outburst that she had overheard. "I still can't believe it. Wendy...actually said all that about you?"

"It's not like I could forget it," she shrugged.

"But, she can't feel like that!" Mabel stated. "I mean, maybe she did at the time, but just yesterday, we heard her basically say that she would rather have you around than her overwhelming dad."

"Mabel's right. Wendy can't  _hate_ you," Dipper agreed. "I mean, by the way that Dan had described things, you two sounded so close when she was young."

"When she was  _young_ ," Valora emphasized. "But, she's nineteen now. An adult capable of her own responsibilities and choices. Either way, she hasn't needed me before and she sure doesn't need me now. Dan's done a fine job raising her on his own. I wasn't the biggest fan of his strategy, but clearly, he was right about something when it came to pushing the kids to go out and face their fears."

"Well, now he feels like  _you_  were right about trying to raise them to be level-headed," Dipper told her. "Says that now that he's trying to teach her to be more responsible for her move, she's been much more against him."

Valora sighed. "Dan's never been the greatest at teaching responsibility. Partly because he's never been a very responsible man himself. But, when he tries, he tends to come off as more overbearing than he is helpful. I know from firsthand experience  _and_  from watching Wendy go through it herself."

"Wait...watching?" Mabel questioned. "You mean, you come back to watch your family?"

"Once a month ever since I first came back," Valora nodded. "Even if I was hurt by what Wendy said, she was still my daughter. The same way Dan was still my husband and the boys were still my boys. So, I'd come back regularly on the twenty-third day of each month to check on them all and see how they're doing. Kind of like some guardian angel, I guess. So, to an extent, even if they didn't know it, I was still there for them."

"The 23rd of each month," Mabel realized. " _That's_ why you're here today."

Another realization crossed Dipper's mind. "And April 23rd...that was the night…"

"...when she got expelled," Valora finished. "Yeah, I knew where you were going with that. It's what I overheard when I first got caught you guys."

"So you know…" Dipper discerned. "You were there...and she saw you, didn't she?"

"She did."

"And so  _you're_ the reason she got stuck on the fence," he pointed out, mentally beginning to connect everything he had already learned about the situation. "She saw you and recognized your face, but couldn't believe it was you. So, she sat there in utter shock before getting pulled down by security. So in a way,  _you_ indirectly got her expelled…And  _you're_ indirectly the reason she's moving…"

"Dipper…" Mabel nudged, finding his wording coming off as insincere despite that not being his intention.

"I didn't  _aim_ to get seen. In fact, I didn't even know it was her until I saw her on the fence," Valora explained. "I had never seen most of her friends before that day, and so when I saw them all running, I just took it as a bunch of teens getting into trouble. But then I saw her on the fence and then I saw her see me. On top of that, I had already come to the dimension that day later than usual. If I had come earlier before that night, then none of that would've ever happened."

"So, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time," Mabel concluded.

"Just about," she nodded as she put her chin in her hands. "She's my daughter. I wouldn't ever try to destroy her future intentionally. I mean, I've already done enough by not being there to see her grow up."

Mabel frowned. "You say that like that's  _your_ fault though. I mean, it's not like you actually left them at your own will. It'd probably take an awkward dinner to explain, but I don't see why you can't just come back and...be a mom again. Wendy's grown up, but you still have some boys that aren't."

Valora thought for a moment. "It's just...not fair. They're all still  _my_ kids and they all lost me when they were at different points in their life. I mean, Wendy's moving away for college, Marcus just graduated and he's going to be on his way soon, Kevin's going to be a senior, and Gus is just starting high school. In one way or another, they've either reached or are reaching the backend of growing up. The way I see it, there's no job left for me here. I mean, Gus was only an infant when I vanished and so he hardly even  _knows_ me..."

She began to choke up with tears as she said that aloud, which received sorrowful looks from both of the twins. She trembled slightly as she still tried to keep herself together despite her saddened emotions.

"How am I going to walk back into their lives  _now_ when none of them even need me anymore?"

She then put her face in her hands as she began to silently weep. The twins continued to look on with remorse, up to the point where Mabel walked over and sat beside her, patting her on the back comfortingly. She then looked up at her brother, who still sat across from them, and narrowed her eyes.

"So, bro, is this mystery solved yet?"

Dipper glanced back and forth her and Valora, thinking before giving a hesitant shrug. "Yeah. I think this is as solved as we can get."

Mabel raised an eyebrow. "Was it worth it?"

He looked up at her and processed her question, only before realizing just what she meant. The morning had started off with the simple goal of trying to figure out how Wendy got expelled from college. But, over the course of the day, they had gotten themselves more deeply involved into Corduroy family history, which in turn, led them to the unexpected meeting and rediscovery of Wendy's mother. With the backstory that she had given and the emotions that she shed, they couldn't have had gotten anymore personal with their situation.

While it hadn't been stated, Dipper already knew that by the time they would part ways with Valora, they'd have to keep their meeting a secret. There was nothing they would tell Wendy or the rest of their family. Nothing they could do with this newfound information other than keeping it to themselves, which was a bummer because despite her long absence, Valora had the potential to happily reunite with her family despite her fears of rejection.

But, in the end, he realized that Mabel was right from the moment she said it. That this was a situation that didn't call for them. While they did have a better understanding of Wendy's history and more recent behaviors, there was still little for them to do to change that themselves. The problem Valora faces is one beyond their capabilities and even a solution as simple as reuniting with her family might not even solve for the emotional trauma her family had endured over the years.

So, perhaps, it wasn't worth it.

* * *

The Gravity Falls Jewel Store felt like it couldn't have been an easier score for Wendy. As far as protecting her identity went, she didn't have a ski mask to hide her face, so she resorted to using an old, Halloween bandit mask around her eyes. After parking her car further down the block, she stealthily made her way around the back of the store. When it came to getting inside, she simply used a bobby pin to try to pick her way through the backdoor lock, only to quickly realize it wasn't even locked for the night in the first place and she could walk inside.

Keeping in mind what Stan had said about the diamond necklace, she then searched around the back of the store for it before finding it in its own glass box placed on a pedestal. Knowing better than to noisily break the glass, she instead managed to locate a set of keys from behind one of the glass counters, with one of them managing to successfully unlock the box.

Swiping the necklace, she found the job to be near effortless, which is how she preferred her work. She then proceeded to walk back out the back door with the necklace in hand, satisfied with her accomplishment.

"I told Stan I could take this place on my own!" she said to herself as she held the necklace out in front of her eyes, allowing for the moonlight to shine upon it. "'Can't take it on my own,' my ass. This job couldn't be easier."

"FREEZE!"

"PUT YOUR HANDS UP!"

Glancing over to the side, she was startled to see Blubs and Durland standing right before her as their cruiser's headlights shined right in her face. Looking over at them, she spotted that they both held handguns in their hands, both aimed directly at her.

"Woah!" she yelled, dropping the diamond necklace as she raised her hands up fearfully. "Who the hell gave  _you two_  guns?!"

Blubs raised an eyebrow before immediately realizing her confusion. "Oh, these ain't guns. They're tasers."

"Made to look more like guns for extra intimidation," Durland added with a sly smile.

"Our superiors gave them to us for our incompetency earlier today in trying to catch criminals," Blubs explained. "Don't be a fool, though. They can still get ya just as fast as a real gun can."

"So, you two were given tasers for sucking at your job?" Wendy questioned. "What kind of logic is that?!"

"They figured we might be able to do a better job if they gave us something with range," Durland explained further.

"Also, after all the criminals that have gotten away today, this is basically our last chance at catching anyone before we get fired," Blubs awkwardly added, realizing the embarrassment that came with such claim. He then put a serious face up as he focused his sights on her again. "So, yeah, we ain't letting you get away."

"I just don't understand. That robbery was slick as can be! How'd you two even find out about it?" Wendy asked, completely confused as to how she was caught despite pulling off such a stealthy robbery.

"Guess you didn't do enough research on the place to know it's outfitted with a nighttime invisible laser security system that sends signals directly to our local station when tripped," Durland told her with a smug look.

Wendy's confusion immediately turned into annoyance. "Invisible lasers... _why not?_ "

"Anyways, we're going to have to take you in now," Blubs cut to the chase as he pulled a set of handcuffs out from his belt with his other hand. "And considering you just tried to steal the store's more expensive diamond necklace, I can already tell you that you're going to be going to be in a lot of trouble here, miss."

"Lots of jail time. Maybe even prison," Durland claimed.

"What? I can't go to prison!" Wendy anxiously refused. "I'm just a kid! Well, I mean, I'm a young adult by age standards, but I'm still  _basically_ a kid! My dad would kill me if he found out about this!"

" _Oooo_ , lookee here, Durland," Blubs said with an amused voice. "The girl's worried about getting in trouble with her dad."

"Well, maybe you should've been a good kid and stayed out of trouble," Durland said, also amused. "Sounds like that's what  _daddy_  would've wanted."

Wendy narrowed her eyes as the two burst out chuckling while proceeding to make their way toward her with the handcuffs. She considered running, not believing either of them would make a good shot with their tasers. But still, the consequences that came with resisting an officer, along with whatever she would receive should she get caught, would only worsen things for her, as well as for her dad. So, she found herself stuck not knowing whether to resist anyway or comply.

_CRASH!_

Everyone's eyes immediately redirected toward the police cruiser, which had suddenly been rammed into by another car. The windows of the car had completely shattered as a result, revealing Stan Pines in the driver's seat as he breathed heavily. He then glanced over at the two cops as they looked back at him.

"Oh no! It's Sheriff Butthead and Deputy Doofus!" he shouted in an obviously fake scared voice. "I hope they don't catch me in my car full of  _all the various items I've stolen from all over town today!_ "

Wendy was shocked to see that Stan had come to her aid, though, she wasn't too sure exactly what he was trying to do by putting himself an open position for both Blubs and Durland. With a single glance at Stan, the two cops managed to immediately recognize him and identify him from the day's events.

"Hey, that's the man who stole the groceries!" Durland realized as he pointed over at Stan.

"And the painting from the Cheapskate Museum!" Blubs added.

"And Mayor Tyler's mini Statue of Liberty made of bottle caps!"

"And all the other things that were stolen all over town!"

"Did neither of you idiots just hear what I just said?" Stan asked, eyes narrowing in slight annoyance.

"But wait, didn't he have an accomplice with him?" Blubs asked, wondering why Stan wasn't with another person.

" _Pfft!_  An accomplice?" Stan questioned. "Please! Nobody needs an accomplice to get away from cops as gullible as  _you_ morons!"

Blubs narrowed his eyes at Stan as he prepared his taser gun. "Well, one might be helpful right about now, wouldn't it?"

Stan kicked his car door open before stepping out, getting into a position ready to run. "I may be old, but I still got a pair of BARELY working legs! Try to catch me mother- _AGGHHHHH!_ "

At that moment, Blubs and Durland had simultaneously fired their taser guns at Stan, hitting him directly in his torso. As he screamed, he fell onto the ground, arms and legs jolting around as the electric shocks streamed through his body.

"AGGHHHH! WHO GAVE THESE IDIOTS TASERS?" Stan questioned as he attempted to claw away from them, only to be tased yet again for further resistance. " _AGGHHHHHHH!_ "

"You have the right to remain silent!" Blubs shouted as he dropped his taser and ran over to Stan, placing his hands behind his back before putting cuffs around them. With Durland's help, the two promptly pinned him up against his car before inspecting his body for weapons.

With both cops now handling Stan, Wendy remained free to escape. However, she continued to stand in place, growing more anxious as she watched Stan get detained, uncertain of what he wanted her to do next.

" _Mr. Pines?_ "

Stan's eyes glanced over at her, struggling to maintain his focus due to the intense pain that the electric shocks had brought him. Still, he realized her presence and tried not to let the pain get the best of him for a moment to acknowledge her.

"I'M DOING THIS FOR  _YOU_ , KID!" he shouted out to her. "NOW WHAT'RE YOU WAITING FOR?! GO!  _RUN!_ "

Wendy still remained anxious and somewhat terrified of what was happening. A part of her wanted to assist Stan, but she realized there was little she could do against armed cops. So, as soon as Stan told her to run, she did. Immediately, she turned away from what was happening between the three and began sprinting as fast as she could away from them.

Durland noticed her, glancing over at her as she turned around the corner of the block. "Blubs! The girl! She's running away!"

"Don't worry about her!" Blubs told him as he held Stan out in front of him. "We just caught an eleven-time robber! It looks like we ain't losing our jobs after all, Durly!"

Durland smiled happily as he threw his hands in the air. "WOOHOO! This day's going in the memory book, Blubs!" he cheered before diving into his pocket and pulling out a camera, to which he then turned it to take a self-portrait of themselves as they held Stan, who remained unamused and in total agony. "Say  _cheese!_ "

_Snap!_

* * *

Wendy didn't bother looking back as she ran. She had no idea whether she was being chased down by Blubs and Durland and she didn't want to find out. While they weren't the brightest officers in Gravity Falls, that didn't mean they weren't capable of  _some level_  of competency. She figured if they upped their game in the slightest way, they'd easily be able to catch her.

But that's what she wanted to avoid.

As she ran, she began to have flashbacks as a result of growing deja-vu. The fact that she already had this type of run with the police once before was getting to her. Knowing that she was, yet again, running from the cops only two months later as a result of her own dumb decisions. Except that this time, she was on her own. Before, she was alongside her friends, but this time, she was all by herself.

She hated it.

It was not even close to what she had in mind when she considered taking on a life of crime. Was this really a glimpse at what it was like? Committing such selfish actions only to be overwhelmed by the stress of potentially getting caught and thrown in jail for life? Was this seriously what she had told Stan she wanted?

She didn't even know anymore. Her mind was in so many places and she was overwhelmed with anxiety and PTSD to the point where she couldn't settle down until she knew she was safe at home.

But the flashbacks continued. The memories still got to her. One moment, she could see where she was going, but then the next, she'd couldn't. She could hardly tell which point of time she was in as she ran down an alleyway with a chain-link fence that she intended to hop over.

* * *

" _Hurry, Wendy!" Thompson shouted at her from beyond the fence before he ran off into the woods._

" _I'm going!" she shouted as she climbed up the school fence. She quickly reached the top, throwing one of her legs over the other side, planning to throw herself back down._

_However, as she glanced over the other side of the fence, her eyes fell upon a particular figure through the trees. It was exceptionally dark, but that didn't hinder her ability to see that there was a person who stood behind one of the trees, appearing to look directly at her. She looked back at the person and saw they didn't resemble Robbie, Tambry, Lee, Nate, or Thompson. It didn't look like anybody she immediately recognized, which began to make her grow somewhat disturbed by the fact someone might've been watching her._

_Then, despite the distance and darkness, she managed to see their eyes._

_Her sparkling jade eyes._

_Around those eyes, she began to make out a familiar freckled face._

_And then, it clicked._

_Her mouth hung open in utter shock at the sudden realization. Her eye twitched as her brain suddenly felt like it had lost its ability to function for a moment before attempting to reboot._

_It can't be…There's no way..._

" _Wendy?" Thompson's voice suddenly rang in her head as he ran back over to her on the fence. "What're you doing? Everyone already ran off ahead! C'mon, we gotta move!"_

_She knew he was looking up at her, but she didn't take a single glance away from the woman's face. She didn't even blink, for she didn't want to risk her suddenly disappearing afterward. She wanted to make sure she was really there._

" _Wendy?" Thompson asked her again, concern growing in his voice._

_Thompson will prove she's real..._

" _T-Thompson?" she stuttered to him as she kept her eyes focused on the woman. "Do you see what I'm looking at?"_

" _W-What?" Thompson nervously asked, not knowing what she was talking about in the middle of an already intense situation._

" _Through those trees behind you!" she told him, pointing her finger up. "Do you see that?"_

_There looked to be a flash of some sort just as she pointed at the woman. But before she could take a moment to properly process it, she felt a rough hand wrap around the ankle that hung back over the school side of the fence, pulling her down._

" _AHHHH!" she cried as she fell to the ground, suddenly feeling various hands grab ahold of her by her arms in a restaining way. Staring forward through the chain-link fence, all she was was Thompson, who stared right back at her in horror as she was dragged off._

" _NOOOOOO!" he cried out to her as he desperately grabbed onto the chain-link fence and shook it. "WENDY!"_

* * *

" _AHHHH!_ " Wendy screamed as she tripped over the top of the alley's chain-link fence, resulting in her falling to the ground on the side of her arm.

She laid for a moment before pulling herself up on her knees. As she did so, she felt a rough pain on her right forearm going down to her wrist underneath her long black sleeve. She knew it wasn't the pain of a broken bone, but the pain of an open wound causing by such a violent fall unto rough concrete, her forearm taking most of the impact.

At that same moment, it started to rain. She only then noticed the formation of dark rain clouds among an already dark evening as she looked up at the sky. However, despite this, she decided to keep proceeding forward toward home, once again knowing she couldn't settle down until she got there.

* * *

After another half-hour of running, Wendy finally found herself back at the front door of her house. She was drenched from running through the pouring rain and her arm still hurt. But she didn't care now that she was home.

She dove into her back pocket and pulled out her house key, inserting it into the lock and turning before opening it up slowly. Being mindful of the fact that it was still late and her family was most likely sleeping, she made sure every action of her's as she walked inside was as quiet as can be.

After softly closing and locking the door behind her, she crept her way into the kitchen. She flipped the light switch so she could better see around her. Then, she looked down at her right arm as she pulled her sleeve up, revealing the single, large, bloody scrape that ran along her forearm to her wrist. She looked at it in disgust for a moment before brushing it off. It still hurt, but the pain had died down since initially receiving it, and she had greater things on her mind that she felt more inclined to worry about.

She then made her way over to the sink, where she drew her fingers through the blinds of the window in front of it, glancing outside and looking out for any signs of police. She felt confident that if they had followed her, they wouldn't be able to track her path through the dark and rainy woods, but she still remained cautious. Their cabin was very secluded within the forest and it would be the most logical place to search if found.

"Oh man! I left my car back in town!" she suddenly realized upon looking outside at the noticeably empty space in front of their house, where her car usually sat. "God dammit...how am I supposed to explain-"

" _WENDY!_ "

Startled, she jumped as she quickly turned around to face her dad as he towered menacingly above her. The look on his face was angry and unforgiving, which was immediately a sign that she was in trouble. She began to tremble anxiously as she stood beneath him.

"WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?!" he furiously asked. "I'VE BEEN WORRIED SICK! YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?! I'VE BEEN CALLING AND CALLING, BUT YOU NEVER PICK UP YOUR PHONE! I ALWAYS SEE YOU TEXTING AND CALLING YOUR FRIENDS, YET YOU CAN'T EVEN ANSWER YOUR OWN-"

He paused as he suddenly noticed her scraped arm and how blood still continued to run from it. As he processed how bad it was, his anger with her was then put on an immediate hold as he crouched down in front of her, pulling her arm forward so he could more closely examine it.

"What the hell happened?" he asked with concern in his eyes as he scanned in the injury. "How'd you get this? What have you been-"

_Sniff._

He glanced up at her face and was surprised to see she was on the verge of tears. She tried to avoid eye contact with him for fear that he would notice, but she knew it wasn't working. Seeing her like this only increased his concern for her.

"Wendy?" he asked calmly, prompting her to turn her back toward him and look him in the eye. "What happened?"

At that point, she couldn't contain herself anymore and burst into tears. Reflexively, she threw her arms around him and hugged him tight as she stuffed her face in his shoulder.

" _I'm...so sorry…_ " she told him through her tears.

Dan's confusion and concern remained, only continuing to increase as he was still left without a clear answer about what troubled her. "For  _what?_ "

She sniffled. "For  _everything_. For getting expelled; for not caring; for calling you overwhelming; for making you  _worry..._ "

At that moment, Marcus, Kevin, and Gus proceeded to stick their heads into the kitchen, silently watching what was happening between their sister and their dad, neither of who were aware of their presence.

Wendy sniffled, calming her sobbing down a bit. "I knew one day I'd eventually have to leave home…but, I didn't want it to be like  _this_."

Manly Dan processed every word of her weeping, allowing himself to grow calmer once he knew she wasn't in trouble the way the he was thinking she was. He then put his arm around her, stroking her hair comfortingly.

"Me neither," he admitted before proceeding to pull her away from his shoulder so he could look her in the eye again. "But, I know you can do it," he assured her. "You are the strongest, smartest, and bravest girl I've ever known since your mother. You may have made some bad decisions before, but if I know my little girl, then she'll always come back stronger than them. She always does."

He then pulled her back into a hug, which she immediately returned. Though she continued to sob as a means of releasing all of her emotional stress, she did so much quieter as she stuffed her face back into his shoulder.

There weren't many moments where she had ever cried to her dad. However, she had almost forgotten that the last time she had wasn't very long ago either. Being reminded of her mother allowed her to recall a moment three years and two months ago after she had angrily renounced her mom and the thought of her returning.

She remembered that her rant shocked her dad to the point of speechlessness, which was an uncommon reaction from him. Soon after, though, she began to realize herself that she may have expressed herself far more harshly than she really meant and that her rant was fueled less by resentment and more from missing her mother.

Of course, Dan had already noticed this and had already begun making his way toward her slowly, while simultaneously gesturing for to calm down. At the same time, she had teared up and ran up to him, hugging him the same way she did now with her face pressed into his shoulder while she sobbed. He patted her on the back, understanding how she felt.

"You miss her, don't you?" she remembered him asking.

"So much…" she had answered, nodding her head in his shoulder. " _So much…_ "

She couldn't say she was surprised by the fact that she found herself in a such a similar position only a few years later. But remembering such a moment as well as comparing it to the present gave her a retrospective on just how much she relied on her dad for venting. To realize how wrong she had been for recently thinking of him as nothing beyond being an overwhelming father figure with little to look back positively on.

While Dan may have been a hard dad, he still loved her. And despite her mistakes, he keeps loving her and keeps being there for her, just as Stan tried to tell her before.

And she realized now that he was right.

She hugged Dan tighter as tears continued to stream from her eyes. "I love you, dad."

"I love you too, Wendy," he returned, tightening his own hug. "So much…"

Wendy opened her eyes for a second as she heard this. She then smiled as she glanced over at him gratefully before closing her eyes again and just letting their hug do the rest of the work.

* * *

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

As three consecutive knocks were heard at the front door of the Mystery Shack, Ford promptly walked over toward it and opened it up. Standing before him were Blubs and Durland, who both held a scruffy Stan in handcuffs in front of them.

"Hey, Sixer!" he greeted his brother with an awkward smile. He then glanced back and forth between him and himself before realizing there was almost no good excuse for his situation. "Uh...listen, it's been a long night…"

Having already noticed Stan's absence upon his return to the Shack, Ford simply stared back at him without an ounce of amusement, sighing as he crossed his arms disappointedly.

* * *

The night passed and the next day quickly arrived. After a night of chaos and settlements, in the end, Stan found himself stood outside on the front porch of the Shack. He looked beside him to see Ford sat at a table set out on the porch with a bunch of various papers spread out amongst it.

He then glanced down at his ankle, which now had a metal bracelet around it with a blinking red light - the final result of all the negotiations made with the officers the previous night.

"Welp. It's certainly not the worst punishment I've ever received," he admitted as he scanned the ankle bracelet. "In one day, I committed eleven robberies and ran into an officer's car, and the worst I get is an ankle bracelet that shocks me if I walk fifty meters away from the Shack. Though, it's still kind of a load of crap. All I wanted to do was leave the house and now I'm  _literally banned_  from leaving the house."

Ford tapped a few buttons on his wristwatch before looking up at him. "Well, lucky for you, I've already managed to hack into and gain control over the bracelet functions from the local police and their trackers."

"Already?" Stan asked, shocked by his brother's fast working speed. "Wow, and for a second, I thought I was actually gonna have to  _wear_  this thing."

"Actually, you are," Ford revealed. "Except instead of shocking you whenever you leave a certain distance of the house, I've set it to shock you whenever you leave a certain distance of Meridian," he explained as he gestured toward his watch. "This way, I can personally monitor you and your actions closely."

"Aw, c'mon, Ford!" Stan complained. "It's not like I actually did anything Bill-like yesterday! Again, all I wanted was to leave the house for a change!"

"And you'll finally have the opportunity to, now that I've decided to bring you along with me on my future endeavors outside of the Shack," Ford claimed. "I previously thought it wouldn't have to come to this, but after yesterday's events, I feel as though it's for the best that I  _personally_  keep you from getting into trouble. Even if you didn't do anything that could've come from the thoughts of Bill, you going out into town like that was still a huge risk for anyone who made contact with you. We should consider ourselves lucky, as it could've been worse."

"Well, how about you then? If I'm gonna have to be stuck around you and your wristwatch as long as this demon's in my head, I might as well ask how much longer it'll be 'til he's out?" Stan asked.

"Well, Fiddleford and I actually managed to design a viable schematic for what he calls a  _Dream Demon Destroyin' Doohickey_ ," Ford answered as he presented the blueprint to him on the table.

"I'll just call it a gun, thank you."

"Anyway, it's not an overly difficult design for us to put together," he continued. "What we need to do now is gather parts for it. Which, I suppose, will be this weekend's job. So, we still have some ways left to go, but what's important to note is that progress is being made." He reached out and placed an assuring hand on his brother's shoulder. "Once this weapon is built Stan, I promise you, we're clearing Bill out right away."

"Thanks, Sixer," Stan replied with a grateful smile. "But, I swear, I'm gonna punch you in the face if this bracelet ever shocks me without warning."

Ford's look of assurance for Stan then turned into one of slight disdain as he gave a sigh. "I'll make a note of that."

Further away from the porch was another golf hole in the shape of Stan's head, which had been freshly reconstructed by Soos after the previous one's explosion. He, along with Dipper and Melody, stood to the side as Mabel prepared herself with a golf club to test out the course.

As she aimed her golf ball, she glanced back up at Soos hesitantly. "Are you sure it won't explode this time?"

"Positive! Not a firework attached, dude!" he assured, giving her a thumbs-up.

"Alright! Here goes nothing, then!" she settled right before swinging her club and giving the ball a solid whack. It flew toward the hole in Stan's mouth, going in and scoring yet another hole-in-one. " _WOO!_ " she cheered. "As if there were any doubts."

However, a few seconds after her score, the head promptly caught fire, seemingly out of nowhere.

"AH!" Mabel screamed as the fire gave her a slight startle, albeit, not as bad as the previous day's explosion. " _Soos!_ "

" _Whoops!_ " Soos awkwardly said as he watched the head set ablaze. "Well, uh, guess the fire machine I added as a replacement to the fireworks didn't really work out all that well either…"

" _I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU NOT TO MAKE THAT COURSE LOOK LIKE MY HEAD!_ " Stan's disapproving voice yelled at Soos from afar.

"Sorry, Mr. Pines!" Soos quickly apologized.

"Where do you even get this kind of stuff from?" Dipper asked him in regard to the fire machine and yesterday's firework launcher.

"I think I would like to know that too," Melody seconded. "As well as how much it  _costs…_ "

Soos's eyes lit up nervously at her curiosity. "Oh, well, you know, something around... _uh...HEY LOOK! WENDY'S HERE!_ "

Everyone's eyes then glanced behind over to the side to see Wendy biking her way into the lot, stopping her way right in front of the four.

"What up, guys?" she greeted with a lighthearted smile.

"Wendy!" Mabel eagerly waved.

"Oh, hey, Wendy!" Dipper greeted as he walked up to her alongside his sister. He then glanced down at her bike and raised an eyebrow. "Uh...biking instead of driving?"

"Eh, driving's cool and all, but I just felt like biking to work today. Mix things up a bit," she said as she took off her helmet and placed her pine tree cap back on her head. "Also, I may have left my car parked somewhere else in town last night and have to go get it back after my shift. But, whichever excuse sounds better to you."

Her eyes then shifted over to the side as she noticed the burning Stan head that Soos and Melody were now trying to handle. As she looked on at it for a moment, she found herself chuckling.

"Nice to see I came ritual," she snickered.

Mabel chuckled. " _Right?_ " she chimed in as she playfully gestured to the head. "This is where we worship the great and mighty Mr. Mystery! The  _First_ to be specific."

"How does the ceremony go? Do we hold hands in a circle or dig into each other's pockets looking for wallets?" Wendy continued to joke.

Mabel thought for a moment. "Hmm...actually, I think we all just dress up as fake museum attractions and do dances."

"Oh, man," she said with an amused laugh. "Don't put me in the Sascrotch costume, please."

The two girls then burst out into simultaneous laughter, whereas Dipper stood to the side just casually chuckling in comparison.

He felt slightly awkward upon Wendy's arrival considering the fact they had met her mother in the woods the previous night, and so he wasn't sure how approaching her with that knowledge in mind would be like in future interactions. And considering the emotional state she was in the last time they had seen her, he figured there was a possibility of her coming back to work in a similar fashion. However, it came off as a surprise to him to see her in a good enough mood to be able to joke around so easily. It was a huge contrast to her mood the previous day.

In fact, as he looked at her, he felt that there was some sort of difference in her appearance as well. But, he couldn't understand exactly how because she actually looked just about the same as she always had that summer, save for some new bandaging that wrapped around her right forearm.

But looking at her face as she laughed, he definitely felt like something else was different.

Something about her face gave off a weird impression. She looked more refreshed. More comfortable. More relaxed. Less stressed. Less sad. Happier. But he couldn't put his finger on how this was possible considering that, once again, she looked practically the same as always.

"Hey Wendy?" he decided to ask, grabbing her attention as her laughter calmed down. "Did you...do something with your hair?"

Wendy was thrown off slightly by his sudden question, unsure what to make of it right away. Then, she held a bit of her hair in her hand as it flowed freely down her back, examining it. "Might've used a bit more conditioner than usual this morning, but, otherwise…" She shook her head. "Why?"

"I, uh, I don't know," he replied, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. "It's just you look kind of... _different_  today."

She raised an eyebrow. "Like... _bad_  different?"

"No, no!  _Good_ different!" he reassured her, shaking his hands somewhat flusteredly. "I just...can't really pin it down. But, trust me, it's a good different."

"Well, for the first time in a while, I actually  _feel_ good," she replied with a smile. "So, that's different."

Both twins glanced at one another as hopeful smiles formed across their faces, both of them thinking the same thing before turning back to Wendy, who then picked up her bike and began walking toward the Shack as she pushed it along.

"Anyway, give me a sec. I'm gonna go lock my bike up," she told the twins before walking off.

As she reached the Shack, she pulled out a chain lock and proceeded to lock her bike up against a post right beside the front porch. Unbeknownst to her, Stan sat right above on the porch and had spotted her as she made her way over.

"You alright, kid?" he asked just as she finished locking up her bike.

She looked up at the porch and finally noticed him. "Oh...Mr. Pines," she awkwardly realized. "Yeah, I'm feeling fine."

"I meant after last night," he specified. "The cops never came knocking at your door, right? Never traced you back down?"

"Well, as far as I'm aware, I got away clean," she replied as she walked up onto the porch itself.

"That's good to hear," Stan nodded. "Glad you're alright after all of that."

"Yeah…" she nodded in agreement as she rubbed the back of her neck, trying to figure out the appropriate words to acknowledge how their last interaction had gone down. "Look, Mr. Pines, I just wanted to say thanks for saving me back there. I know I didn't listen when you said not to do the job, but even then, you came in and took the punch for me."

"Please. It's not taking a punch for you if it was my fault for getting you into that situation in the first place," he brushed off.

"Well, I mean, it's not like I hadn't had a lot on my mind beforehand," she said as she walked up and sat beside him on the porch couch. "I was already kind of messed up."

"Maybe, but I only worsened it with my own selfishness," he claimed.

"What do you mean?"

He sighed. "Kid, when I saw you driving me through the streets, it was like I saw a part of myself - a thieving little free spirit with dad issues. And I guess when I saw that, a part of me wanted to relive those days for whatever reason. Maybe it was because of the nostalgic feeling of youthful freedom. Maybe it was because I felt like I was being rebellious to my own dad. Or maybe it's because I'm just a terrible person. Hell, I have a demon housed inside my head that's affected my decisions before, so that's not even something to rule out either," he said as he gestured toward his head. "Whatever the reason might be, it was still a selfish thing to do in the end and it almost got you into serious trouble. Being as old as I am, I think I've come to learn enough about good to know when someone isn't bad, and  _you_  aren't. As I've said before, I'm not a role model, and you should  _never_ look up to me. You're young and you're already doing a helluva lot better than I ever was at your age. So, while you have the chance to make something of yourself, take it. But at the same time, don't let that change who you are or what you wanna be. Don't lose yourself, but don't let yourself go either," he concluded. "You get what I'm trying to say?"

Wendy processed his words for a moment, giving it some serious thought and consideration before giving him a thankful smile. "Yeah, I get it. Thanks, Stan. Believe it or not, you've actually been a help in getting me through probably one of the hardest times in my life. In fact, last night, I talked with my dad and...well, I think things are going to be alright between us."

Stan smiled. "I'm glad to hear it, kid. Whatever happens, I hope for the best."

Still feeling grateful for what he had said and done to try and help her, she wrapped her arms around him and gave him a warm embrace. "You are the  _worst_  boss I've ever had."

Stan was thrown off slightly by her sudden hug, but then he smirked as he put a single arm back around her. "Yeah, and you're the laziest employee out there and I wish I never hired ya."

" _Riiiight_ ," Wendy rolled her eyes as she pulled away from him. "As if  _you_ don't already outmatch my degree of laziness."

"Eh. You ain't wrong," Stan shrugged in agreement.

"Hey, Wendy!" Mabel suddenly called out for as she and Dipper proceeded to walk up to her at the porch. She then held her cell phone out to her. "Thompson just texted us."

"Apparently, he saw a slice of pizza come to life and crawl under his bed. Says he needs help," Dipper explained.

"Wanna go check it out?" Mabel asked her eagerly.

Wendy thought about it, finding the idea of a greasy slice of pizza crawling around the floor of one's bedroom to be absolutely disgusting. However, Thompson was still a good friend and it would only be wrong not to at least attempt to help him out.

"Eh, why not?" she shrugged as she got up from the couch and stepped off the porch, walking alongside the twins. "I got six days left in town. How else am I gonna spend them? Actually _working?_ "

The three then burst out laughing as they went on their way, leaving the Shack behind. Stan watched as they walked off, still smiling at the thought that Wendy had actually managed to find a bright spot in her family again. A part of him continued to wish that he had it the way she did with his family growing up, but as he remembered the point he currently stood at in his life, he felt no need to complain.

At the table that Ford sat at, he shuffled through the various papers that laid throughout as he tried to figure out how he was going to go after the parts for the weapon against Bill. However, as he shuffled through the papers, an envelope slipped out from in between and fell onto the floor. He picked it up and held it out into his hand, suddenly growing surprised to see it was an envelope directed toward  _him_ as he found his name in handwritten writing.

"Huh. A handwritten letter directed toward  _me?_ " he questioned as he looked on at it. "Odd. I don't think I know anyone who'd send me such thing. Heck, I thought Mabel told me the other day that handwritten letters were the old-fashioned way of communicating in this day and age."

"Maybe the Mothman finally sent you your money back," Stan assumed as a possibility as he cracked open a can of Pitt Cola.

"Unlikely. I've practically accepted that he's a lost cause at this point," Ford replied as he tore his finger into the envelope, opening it up.

"You see?  _That's_ why I don't deal financially with monsters," Stan pointed out.

"Anyway, let's see what we really have here," Ford said as he unfolded the letter inside and held it out in front of him.

_Stanford,_

_The multiverse is changing. The Nightmare Realm is near the end of its lifespan. I've heard rumors of a potential new threat emerging from somewhere I haven't yet identified. There's also plenty more I wish I could go over, but it's even become too risky to discuss in mere letters. That's just the kind of state the multiverse is in now. I just think it's worth warning you about._

_I know you have many questions, therefore, I've attached your original portal schematics that you had shown me when we first met. I reworked them with modifications from my own multiversal navigator's design. You'll probably find them useful._

_Glad to know you made your way back home. I hope to meet again soon._

_Valora_

"Valora…" Ford said to himself, remaining wide-eyed as he stared on at the unexpected name.

"So, who's it from?" Stan asked.

Ford glanced up at him for a brief moment before looking back at the letter and smiling.

"An old friend..."

* * *

Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy continued walking through the open forest on their way toward Thompson's house. As they walked, Wendy knew it would be somewhat of a distant walk away, and figured it might've been a good time to address what had happened the last time she spoke with the twins the previous day.

"Also, guys. I should probably apologize for snapping yesterday," she began, grabbing their attention. "As I'm sure you both were already able to figure out, life's been kind of tough on me as of late, and I haven't really been very open to talking about it. But now that things are starting to get better, I think maybe it's about time I actually told you guys what's been going on. Ya know, with me getting expelled and junk."

Knowing where she was going with things and given what they already knew, Dipper and Mabel stopped walking and glanced at one another nervously.

"Uh...actually, we don't need to know…" Dipper claimed, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly.

"You don't have to…" Mabel agreed, shaking her head against the idea.

"Oh, c'mon," Wendy pushed. "Considering how much you guys mean to me, I feel it's only important that I tell you guys what happened."

"And considering how much you mean to  _us_ , we don't feel it's necessary for you to tell us something that's most likely really personal and possibly traumatizing," Mabel told her, before realizing her made-up assumption may have been a bit too on-the-nose. "I mean, not that  _I know_ that it is. I'm just taking a wild guess.  _Heheh_."

Wendy raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure? I mean, I'm telling you guys...I'm  _cool_ about talking about it now. "

"Sure, but, what do we have to gain from it?" Dipper asked. "Yeah, you got expelled, but it's not a story you need to tell us. Especially, when it revolves around such an infamous moment in your life. In the end, you're still our friend and you telling us how you got expelled isn't going to change that. So, while you still have a few days left in town, let's just cherish that time rather than devoting it talking about the past."

Mabel nodded in agreement with his words, even smiling at the fact that he had taken in what he had learned from the previous day. Wendy stared at him, thinking over his words for a moment before giving him a warm smile herself.

"You guys are the best," she told the two as she stepped forward and lovingly wrapped her arms around both of their necks as they continued to walk along, all of them smiling and chuckling with one another as they did.

At the same time as they resumed making their way through the forest, Valora stood up on a tree branch, watching the three from above. She remained within the shadows of the forest and kept her distance, ensuring there wouldn't be a chance for her to be seen.

Being the day after her normally scheduled visit to the dimension, she knew it wasn't her time to be there. But considering she never had the chance to check on Wendy the previous night, she had decided to make a quick pitstop back to 46'\ before making her return to the Nightmare Realm to continue her usual work.

And seeing the wide smile across her daughter's face as she walked alongside the Pines twins was enough to bring a smile to her own. Satisfied and assured that she was alright and in good hands, she considered her job done. Pressing a button amongst the wrist of her suit, she promptly teleported out of the dimension, to which she would then wait until the next 23rd came around before she would return to see her family again and ensure that they were still okay.

And even after Wendy leaves Gravity Falls, she'll still find her and ensure that even her Little Red stays watched.

* * *

 

 

_YDORUD FRXOG'YH VZRUQ VKH KDG VHHQ D OHVV SHSSLHU PDEHO EHIRUH LQ WKH PXOWLYHUVH_


	36. Ryland On Wheels: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mabel tries to support Ryland against his rival at a BMX event.  
> Meanwhile, Dipper, Derrick, Evan, Ford, and Stan work together to gather parts for a weapon against Bill Cipher.

" _I'm sorry Jessica. I just can't see you anymore."_

" _What?! Why not, John?"_

" _Because I literally don't have eyes anymore."_

" _Oh my God…"_

" _Why are you acting surprised? You've already known about this for a week now."_

" _Then why are you acting so dramatic about it now?"_

" _You just asked me to look at the new glasses you bought! In fact, now that I think about it, why would you even ask that if you knew I lost my eyes? Also, why did you even buy glasses in the first place?"_

" _I wanted to see if you'd catch my joke."_

" _HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"_  a laughing track played.

"We'll be back with more of  _The Romantic Drama That Was Secretly A Really Bad Sitcom_  after these messages!"

At the Mystery Shack, Mabel and Ryland watched television sat beside one another in the same living room chair. As they watched the show, they remained more amused by how bad it was rather than the humor itself. Still, an occasional joke would come off as too much and it would result in them cringing within their seat.

"Never change, Gravity Falls Public Access Television.  _Never change_ ," Mabel said with a smile, admittedly glad that television still remained one of the town's low points, which in turn, kept it's authenticity intact from her perspective.

"Gotta say. It's pretty admirable that they continue to put out bad shows and movies," Ryland said. "Though as laughably bad as these are, I do miss quality television shows."

"Whaaat? You saying this isn't  _quality?_ " Mabel asked, gesturing toward the television.

"A different type of quality," Ryland said with a chuckle. "But I know you know what I'm talking about. Also, a town with television that's eight years behind the current schedule is kind of annoying."

"Yeah, I can understand that," Mabel nodded. "Though I think it adds to the Gravity Falls charm. An old town with old people who have old TVs with an old schedule."

Ryland glanced down at his watch. "Speaking of old people, I should probably be getting back home before my parents blast me for being out past curfew." He then glanced over at her as he stood up from the chair. "Uh, not that they're  _old_ , but uh...you know what I mean. I was just trying to be clever."

"I get it," she quickly brushed off with a smirk. "But c'mon, it's a Saturday night! Would you get in trouble just for staying to watch one more episode? I mean, we're about to get to the part where John gets his eyes back and then Jessica gets into that tragic accident that makes her lose her eyes!"

"I probably wouldn't, but to be honest, I think I've had enough eye puns for one night," Ryland said as he put his jacket on. "Besides, tomorrow's the day of BMX finals. Gotta rest up for that anyway."

Mabel gasped, shooting up from her seat in excitement. "Oh right! Your big bike-trick-making event! I forgot you still had that going on. You've haven't said a word about it for weeks."

"Eh, nothing to boast about," he shrugged as he walked toward the front door. "Just gotta go and give it what I got."

"I should totally come to the park tomorrow so I can watch you then!" Mabel said as she followed him.

Ryland's eyes bulged as she suggested this. "No! I mean...that's not necessary...for you to do…" He began rubbing the back of his neck nervously as he tried to come up with the words to tell her. "I mean...look, it's going to be pretty uneventful. I doubt many people are gonna show up. It's pretty boring actually. Like, so boring that you couldn't even lighten it up with your usual cheery spirit. So yeah, I wouldn't recommend showing up."

"Boring?" she questioned, raising an eyebrow. "I thought this was a big event for you."

"It is, but BMX events aren't the same scale as something popular like football or soccer," he explained. "I mean, this is happening at the local bike park. That should tell you everything that you need to know."

"Yeah, it tells me I should still try to be there to watch my new boyfriend at one his big events based off his favorite hobby," she said as she grabbed his hand, reminding him of their newfound relationship. "I mean, c'mon. Don't you want me to be there to support you?"

Ryland looked down at their joined hands before looking back up into her eyes, which he could tell displayed her genuine want to be there for him. He then smiled gratefully, despite his stance not exactly changing.

"I do," he nodded. "It's not that I don't want you to be there. It's just...I know it won't be as great as you think it'll be. Trust me, this isn't my first time making it to finals in a BMX event. I know how it goes. I'm just telling you not to waste your time."

"But-"

"Crap, I really should get going," Ryland cut off as he glanced down at his watch again. He put his hand on the doorknob and pulled the door open before looking back at her with a smile. "I'll text you later."

Mabel gave him a look of hesitation, somewhat dejected by his attempt to tell her off from coming to his event. Still, she gave him a slight nod as she smiled back.

"Okay."

They leaned in and shared a quick goodbye-kiss before Ryland pulled back and stepped out the door, closing it behind him. Walking down the stairwell, Dipper found himself arriving at the right time to catch them share their final moment of the night, much to his own disgust.

"Of course, I walk down just in time to see  _that_ ," he said to his sister distastefully.

Rather than paying attention to her brother's comments, Mabel found herself staring at the door glumly as she thought suspiciously of Ryland pushing so hard for her not to show up to his event. They hadn't even been dating for a week yet, and it already seemed like he was trying to keep secrets from her.

That came across as a surprise to her because, in comparison to her upon the first few weeks of knowing one another, Ryland had never been very secretive. In comparison with her, he had always been very open since they had met, whereas it was always her trying to hide something about herself from him. Since they became a thing, she's been way more open with him, yet now it seems like he's trying to hide something from her. But she didn't have a clue as to what kind of thing that he'd want to keep secret.

"Dipper, what do you think of Ryland?" she asked him curiously.

Dipper thought about it as he walked into the kitchen. "Eh, he's cool, I guess. Though, have you noticed that he sweats  _a lot?_  And not like constant sweating. I mean, if he sweats at all, it's like all of his pores turn into Niagara Falls. Seriously, I hope he keeps hydrated."

"Huh...I  _haven't_  noticed that…" Mabel realized as she thought about it.

Dipper opened the fridge and took out a carton of milk, pouring himself a glass before turning back to his sister. "Anyway, why are you asking what I think? He's  _your_  boyfriend and probably the most normal and unsuspicious one you've ever had."

Mabel could agree with 'normal' but wasn't as sure about 'unsuspicious'. "I don't know...I mean, do you think he's the type of guy who would cheat?"

Dipper had taken a large sip of milk prior to her question, which he then spat out right as she went on, surprising her. He then turned his head toward her and gave her a questionable look.

" _Woah there!_  You two have only been dating since Monday, and you  _already_  think he's  _cheating_  on you?" Dipper asked, dumbfounded and growing enraged. "No one messes with my sister like that!"

"Wait, no!" she shook her head. "I didn't mean-"

"Hang on, sis," he cut off as he began marching his way toward the front door, rolling his sleeves up. "Let me see if this jerk is still out in the parking."

" _Dipper!_ " she shouted as she grabbed his arm and pulled him back into the kitchen. "That's not what I meant! I just wanted your thoughts on whether you think he's the type of guy to do it. I don't think he's  _actually_ cheating on me!"

"Well, why is that even a concern in the first place?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

She sighed as she rubbed her arm. "I don't know…Ryland has this big BMX event of his tomorrow and when I offered to come to support him, he acted all weird and kept telling me not to. It just seemed like he was hiding something."

"Isn't jumping straight to the idea of him cheating kind of a big stretch then?" he asked.

"Is it? I mean, outside of those we already know, I've never met  _his_ friends," she explained. "Maybe there's another girl. Maybe...I'm not the first one. I mean, I hate to think like this, but these kind of people are out there, Dipper. I'd be crushed if I found out he was one of them after all that we've been through in such little time."

"Well, then, let me be the one to bring you back down to Earth for a second," Dipper said as he put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "To answer your first question, I don't think Ryland's that type of guy. He's always been pretty straightforward and real from what I've seen. So, while that doesn't make him innocent in itself, cheating isn't the first conclusion I'd jump to in his case."

"I guess not," she admitted in agreement, looking to the side. "I just don't know why he wouldn't want me to be there to watch him compete in his favorite activity. It feels like he's blocking me out from a part of his life."

"If you're really curious, then just go check it out anyway," he told her. "I assume an event like that is public for whoever to watch, so who's he to stop you?"

"Maybe you can come with me," she suggested. "You know, for brotherly support and all! Also, in case I grow a bit too crazy like I tend to do with my boy situations..."

"Can't. I already agreed to work with Ford and Stan tomorrow to locate parts for the Bill gun," he told her. "There's no way I can drop out of that now."

"Drat!"

"Hey, don't worry. You're capable of handling this on your own," he assured her with a smile. "I'm sure you got this."

She sighed before giving slight smile back. "I hope so."

"Just think positive for now," he suggested. "I mean, you said that this is a big event for him. Maybe he just thinks you'll make him nervous or something."

"Pfft,  _nervous?_ " she questioned with a chuckle. "Why should he feel nervous about a girl who he's seen stuff gummy worms into her own nose?"

Dipper stared at her for a moment. "You...put gummy worms in your nose in front of him?"

"It came up over lunch and he wanted to see it," Mabel explained.

"And you still shove gummy worms... _into your nose…?_ " Dipper asked with a look of disgust. "After all these years?"

"Some talents you just need to make sure you maintain," Mabel simply told him with a shrug.

Dipper continued to stare at her, unable to come up with further words to add to the conversation that would properly display his current feelings. Then, he simply decided it wasn't worth it and just proceeded to walk out of the kitchen.

"I'm going to bed," he simply said as he began walking up the staircase to the attic.

"Have a good sleep, bro-bro!" Mabel casually waved at him, not properly reading his shock and repulsive feelings toward her actions.

Now standing downstairs on her own, she thought for a moment. Thinking back to Dipper telling her that the BMX event was likely public and there was nothing really stopping her from actually going to see Ryland the next day, she decided that was what she was going to do.

"I guess I'll just surprise Ryland at his event tomorrow. And if he thinks I can't lighten up a boring crowd on my own, then I guess some  _extra_  support will be needed…"

She then grabbed her phone and quickly started a group call. It rang for a few seconds before picking up.

"Candy, Grenda! Clear your schedules tomorrow!"

* * *

By next morning, Stan and Ford stood outside the Mystery Shack. Ford held a map in his hands, which had the layout of the entire town, including basic illustrations of the surrounding woods and forests. As he looked at it, Stan was kneeled down, poking at his ankle bracelet.

"God, this thing is strangling my leg," Stan claimed, irritated. "Seriously, can't you loosen this thing just a  _little bit_ , Ford?"

Ford sighed as he looked away from his map. "Stan, we've already been over this. Making that thing any looser makes escaping that bracelet much easier for Bill should he take over," he reminded him. "And I've already loosened it to the bare minimum that allows your blood to continue circulating normally underneath. It's perfectly fine for your wellbeing. It may not be the most comfortable, but no one ever said safety meant comfort."

"This is getting irritating, Sixer," Stan told him with a groan. "By the end of today, we better have gotten these weapon parts you're after. You don't understand how tired I am of hearing Bill as the same excuse for every single bit of misery I've endured since we returned."

"Stanley, I've dedicated nearly every bit of my time to trying to solve this problem since we first came back to Gravity Falls," Ford reminded with narrowed eyes. "I understand how frustrating this is to you, but if you think I'm any less adamant than you about wanting to destroy Bill, then you're wrong. I know selflessness isn't your strong suit, but you need to realize that this isn't just  _your_  problem here. This is  _our_  problem. And we're already working as hard as we can to solve it."

Stan sighed guiltily, realizing his tone and words before had really sounded far more selfish than he intended. "I'm sorry, Sixer. I'm just…"

"...impatient, cranky, and angry?" Ford finished as he looked back at his map. "Yes, I'm already well aware. Anyway, as for your hopes of wanting to find the needed weapon parts today, I'd say that's very much possible. I've already pinpointed a bunch of spots in the forest where we can locate them all. We're just waiting for Dipper and his friends to provide their assistance and then we'll be on our way."

"On an unrelated note, nice to see you still haven't managed to make your map digital for your fancy-schmancy watch," Stan said with an amused smirk as he watched his brother holding up his unfolded map of the town.

"I've been  _trying_  to," Ford admitted as he looked down at his wristwatch. "Unfortunately, I think I might have messed up a circuit or something in my initial construction of Meridian. Some features are still very glitchy, with some functionality relying on chance. And every time I try to fix one thing, another thing breaks. I'll probably have to take apart the whole watch if I want to figure out what the issue is. But at that point, I might as well just design another version. This is still just a prototype after all."

"Whatever you decide to do, I suggest adding a map as one of your first features instead of a toast maker," Stan replied.

Ford sighed. "I'll give it a closer look once we're clear of our current matters." He then looked up and noticed Soos's pickup truck pull up in front of the Shack. "For now, it looks like our assistance has arrived."

As Soos's pickup came to a stop, Dipper got out from the driver's seat. From the passenger seat, Derrick exited, and from the backseat, Evan hopped down, pulling a satchel along with him before closing the door. The three promptly approached Stan and Ford.

"Sorry, Great Uncle Ford. Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long," Dipper apologized.

"Nonsense. The morning's still just begun," Ford assured him. His eyes glanced between Derrick and Evan. "So, these are your friends?"

"Yeah, you guys have met Derrick before," Dipper nodded as he gestured toward Derrick.

"Of course. From the bunker," Ford nodded as he proceeded to shake hands with Derrick. "Your performance last time does not go unappreciated."

"Thanks. Though I wish it was appreciated enough to where I'd actually have a chance to eat breakfast before getting dragged here," Derrick said in a somewhat peevish tone as he glanced over at Dipper.

"Hey, I've already told you since the bunker adventure that you're one of us now," Dipper reminded him. "Which means you're committed to these immediate tagalongs."

"I'm pretty sure his mom never told him that breakfast is the most important meal of the day," Derrick told the others as he gestured to Dipper.

" _Anyway…_ " Dipper proceeded as he walked over beside Evan. "Grunkle Stan, Great Uncle Ford; I don't believe either of you met my good friend, Evan Reeds."

"Greetings," Evan said as he offered his hand out to the Stan brothers.

"Greetings," Ford returned as he shook his hand.

"Wow, another person that actually says 'greetings'," Stan realized as he shook Evan's hand next. "Look at that, Ford. You ain't alone after all!"

"Hey, Evan's young, but he's incredibly gifted for his age," Dipper told them. "Believe it or not, he's a pretty smart guy too."

"Another brilliant mind, huh?" Ford said with a smile as he looked on at Evan. "Well, ever since meeting you Dipper, I've learned not to underestimate the minds and talents of the youth. So, if you claim this young fellow is gifted, I see no reason not to believe you. It's a pleasure to have you with us, Mr. Reeds."

"It's a pleasure to be here, Mr. Pines," Evan nodded with a smile. "I've been an avid researcher of the supernatural of Gravity Falls since learning about it when my family moved here. Dipper called me and told me about your circumstances and I think I may be able to provide some assistance in your mission today."

"Evan's been eager to assist on one of these types of adventures since I met him," Dipper explained. "So I decided to finally bring him along for once."

"I see," Ford acknowledged as he rubbed his chin. "Well, I suppose we should just jump straight into things then." He pulled out a set of papers from inside his coat. "The weapon parts we are looking for aren't so much weapon parts themselves. Instead, they're parts needed to design a source of power for the weapon."

"What about the actual  _weapon_ parts?" Dipper asked.

"Fiddleford's already handling that section of the schematic," Ford explained. "My responsibility is just to find the power source."

"Sounds easy enough," Derrick remarked.

"Well, the catch is the pieces we need are actually from three separate anomalous sources," Ford revealed.

"I retract my statement," Derrick claimed.

"So what're we looking for?" Dipper asked.

"Luckily, nothing I haven't handled before, so I'm aware of what we're up against," Ford claimed as he dug out a set of papers from his coat. "I cataloged them in my journals long ago and so I tried to retain as much as I possibly could to write down. We need to retrieve a Spearrel's pearl, a rare purple Crushroom, and a Queen Scornet's honey."

Dipper, Stan, Derrick, and Evan all stared at him with utter confusion for a solid moment, not having a single idea as to what he just said. And while Dipper considered himself an expert of the third journal's content, he had only ever had very brief reads through the other two journals and so, he too had no immediate idea as to what Ford was referring to.

"Quick question- what the hell are those?" Stan finally spoke up.

"I'll explain on the way. C'mon," Ford gestured as he began walking toward the woods. "Best we start walking now while the sun's still rising. Make use of every second of daylight as we can."

"Oh, great.  _Walking_ ," Stan said unenthusiastically as he followed behind.

"Yeah, I agree," Derrick said as he walked behind him.

"You're young. How's this a problem for you?" Stan asked.

"Just don't have the energy for it," Derrick replied with a shrug before glaring over at Dipper behind him. "That'd probably be different if I wasn't  _literally dragged away from breakfast this morning…_ "

"Ha!" Stan chuckled. "Holding grudges over realistically minor annoyances. I admire that."

Dipper still stood alongside Evan outside of the woods behind everyone else. He glanced down at him.

"Hey, Evan, man. You know, Gravity Falls can be pretty crazy at times," Dipper told him. "I know most of your knowledge is stemmed from behind a screen, but we go firsthand with these types of creatures. So if things start getting too intense for you, we're not gonna force you to stick along. If anything, I'll just take you back home."

"Trust me, Dipper. Even if none of it was truly firsthand, I've done enough research to understand what I'm getting myself into. I think I'm more than prepared," Evan brushed off.

"Alright. If you say so," Dipper nodded.

"Plus, I'm twelve," Evan added. "Weren't you and Mabel twelve when you guys first encountered the town's weirdness?"

"Yeah, we were," Dipper confirmed. "But, you know, even we had our limits then. I'm not trying to say I don't think you can handle it. Otherwise, I wouldn't have invited you in the first place. I just want to make sure you know that you're not locked in. If you want out, we won't hold you back."

"I appreciate it, Dipper, and I appreciate you thinking to bring me along for this adventure," Evan told him gratefully. "But I'm prepared to prove myself for whatever situation awaits my knowledge. I've invested enough in researching the supernatural to know that there isn't anything that'll turn me away from this opportunity."

"Alright, man," Dipper said with a smile as he slapped Evan on the back. "Let's see what you got."

Evan flinched, eye twitching as Dipper's hand touched his back. " _Ow..._ "

"I barely touched you," Dipper said, raising an eyebrow.

" _I'm not physically strong..._ " Evan bluntly admitted through his pain.

"Oh."

* * *

Walking along a designed path around the town square, Mabel, Candy, and Grenda made their way toward the local bike park.

"This is so exciting!" Mabel eagerly exclaimed. "I've never been to a BMX Tournament before."

"I never even knew what BMXing was until five minutes ago," Grenda claimed. "Who knew there was an actual word for doing fancy bike tricks?"

"It might sound as simple as that, but I've seen Ryland go and those tricks don't lie." He knows how to rock on that bike!" Mabel told her.

"Exciting," Candy nodded as she held up a video camera in her hands. "Perhaps, this event will give me the inspiration I need for my film project."

"Oh, right. So what is this film you're working on even for again?" Mabel asked.

"Candy's working to become a film major in college," Grenda explained.

"Yes. I've been taking TV/Film Production classes all of high school so far," Candy nodded. "To progress, my summer assignment is to put together a twenty-minute documentary on any topic of choice by the end of summer."

"Twenty minutes?  _Yeesh_."

"Yeesh indeed," Candy agreed. "But again, it's a topic of  _my_  choice, so it won't be  _too_  bad. Perhaps, I can make it about the life of a teenage biker." She thought for a moment. "You wouldn't mind if I  _stalk_ Ryland this summer for footage, would you, Mabel?"

"Hey, I'm fine with it. Though, I think you might wanna run that by him first…" Mabel replied.

"Awareness ruins authenticity," Candy claimed. "I'll have to just watch him from a distance."

"Well...okay then. Just, ya know, don't be too weird about it," Mabel told her with an accepting smile.

"Don't be  _too_  weird," Candy repeated as she pulled out a notepad and wrote down Mabel's precaution. "Got it."

"Anyway, I can't wait to see the look on Ryland's face when he sees us there to support him. Especially when he sees this new sweater I knitted for the occasion," Mabel told the two as she gestured down at her bright orange sweater with a bike wheel pictured on the front of it.

" _Ooooh_ ," the girls fawned.

"Yeah, I just hope he doesn't get mad that I didn't stay back like he wanted," Mabel said, looking down somewhat hesitantly.

"Yeah, why would he not want you to come to his big event?" Grenda asked, raising an eyebrow. "Sounds suspicious."

"I don't know. He just said it would be way too boring for me. That hardly anybody even shows up," she explained.

At that moment, the girls all froze as they turned a corner in their path and stared ahead.

"Uh, was he sure about that?" Candy asked.

Right ahead of them was the bike park, which had already been arranged for the event. There was also a set of bleachers that sat in front of the course. Much to Mabel's surprise, they were packed with people of various ages, all looking eager for the event.

"Welcome to the Gravity Falls Bimonthly BMX Tournament, here at our local bike park!" an announcer spoke out over a microphone. "Weather's great and we got a lively crowd. Perfect day for some good ol' BMXing. We're going to introduce our three finalists shortly."

"Holy moly…" Mabel awed as she looked around at how prepared everything was, which was opposite to what Ryland had told her. "But...I thought he said that nobody ever showed up!"

"You think he lied to you?" Grenda asked.

Mabel pondered the idea for a moment before brushing it off with a smile. " _Whaaat?_ Of course not! Maybe he just didn't expect so many people to show up. He tends to be way too humble sometimes."

Despite her reassurance, Candy and Grenda exchanged unsure looks, as if their expectations fell out of line with Mabel's. She quickly realized this herself and turned back toward the bleachers.

"C'mon, let's just go find seats," she told them before walking up the bleachers.

The girls followed her as she found an open set of seats within the middle of the crowd. They all sat down and focused their sights on the course while surrounded by a rowdy crowd of other teens or townsfolk. The announcer sat down at a table at the bottom with a microphone in front of him.

"And for our first finalist; born in the state of Hawaii! He's big, he's bold, and for this, he might be too old! Four years out of the slammer, give it up for Makanui Kahale!"

At that moment, a large, bulky man with pure white eyes angrily tore through a set of curtains. He pointed over at the announcer from the stage.

"WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT USING MY REAL NAME?!" he shouted as he proceeded to stomp menacingly toward him.

The announcer stood up from the table fearfully with widened eyes as he realized his mistake. "Oh sh-"

" _AGGGHHH!_ " the finalist shouted as he tackled the announcer from the stage and started beating him up.

" _GHOST-EYES! I MEANT GHOST-EYES!_ " the announcer screamed into his microphone as he received several punches to the face. " _AHHHH! SOMEONE HELP!_ "

The crowd awkwardly watched the commotion just as security ran in to try and separate Ghost-Eyes from the announcer, which proved a struggle due to Ghost-Eyes' insane strength. Mabel watched with slight confusion due to her recognition of Ghost-Eyes, to which a boy rose up from his seat in front of her.

"GO GHOST-EYES!" cheered Gideon with an eager smile as he watched his friend absolutely pummel the announcer.

"Gideon?!" Mabel questioned in surprise from behind him.

He turned around, eyes bulging. " _My-oh-my!_  Mabel Pines! What a surprise it is to be seeing you here!"

"I'd say the same for you," she said with a raised eyebrow in suspicion. "I mean, what are  _you_  doing here at a BMX event?"

"I always come to BMX events! My good buddy, Ghost-Eyes, has been a partaker in the sport for a while now and I've always been there to support him through his big events."

"Isn't he like... _kind of_  old for this sport though?" Mabel asked.

"Eh... _maybe_ ," Gideon slightly agreed. "But ya see, the thing about Ghost-Eyes is that he never learned how to ride a bike as a child. He only just learned how after getting out of prison, since his driver's license has been invalidated and he's  _legally_ not allowed to be on the road anymore. But anyway, he just got so into biking that he wanted to take his skills to the next level. Which led him to learn how to do fancy tricks that he knew he wanted to show off. And as you can see, after four years, he's finally managed to get himself all the way to finals." He clasped his hands together and glanced back over to him like a proud parent. "I'm so proud of him and his progress."

" _I'LL KILL YOU!_ " Ghost-Eyes' angry voice was heard as he began strangling the announcer, with security still trying to separate him.

Gideon looked on for a moment before turning back to Mabel. "Yeah, he tends to be a mixed bag sometimes."

"I see…" she acknowledged.

Soon enough, the security guards finally managed to get Ghost-Eyes off of the announcer. He bitterly crossed his arms as he was pulled back onto the stage. A security guard helped pull the announcer back up as a medic was on standby. Despite his beating, the announcer smiled as he grabbed his microphone.

"I'm okay!" he assured everyone. "I'm A-okay! Just gonna ignore the sharp pain in my lower spine." He then gestured back toward the stage. "Anyways, up next, we have our second finalist. Born in the great city of Paris and... _somehow_  made his way to a small town in the middle of Oregon...you know him from past events! Give it up for Ryland Reeds!"

Ryland proceeded to step out from behind the curtains next. He had a casual smile on his face as he stood beside Ghost-Eyes and waved. There was some light cheering and clapping from most of the crowd at his entrance.

Mabel knew this was her chance to kick things up a notch though. She jumped up onto her seat and stood tall as she put her hands around her mouth. " _YEEEAHH! GO RYLAND!_ "

Ryland looked her way, to which his eyes immediately bulged in horror. Several people in the crowd glanced over at her, as she stood out most from everybody else. He could see them glance back at him curiously.

Mabel realized the crowd wasn't getting as excited as she was and knew she needed help from her friends. "C'mon, girls. We all gotta be loud so it convinces everyone else to cheer for Ryland!"

Grenda paused for a moment, thinking about how to react. " _AHHHHHHHHHHHH! RYLAND! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!_ "

" _WOO!_ " Candy threw her hands in the air. "Go Ryland!"

"THAT'S MY BOYFRIEND, GUYS!" Mabel announced to other members of the crowd. "AND HE'S GONNA WIN THIS!"

People threw annoyed looks Mabel's way, nobody else joining in on her cheering. The three girls quickly noticed this and glanced around somewhat awkwardly. Mabel looks back at Ryland himself, seeing him still standing completely shocked and unamused.

"Why doesn't he look happy to see us?" Candy asked, also spotting his look.

"Should I use my real scream instead of my quiet one?" Grenda asked.

"Just sit down, girls," Mabel gestured them to do as she sat back down herself.

"Well, it looks like Ryland's got some fans. Haha," the announcer chuckled as he looked up at the girls. "Moving on, then. Born with a New Jersey tongue, we have another familiar face. Give it up for two-time BMX tourney winner, Yuri Wyatts!"

From the curtains, another teenage boy stepped out onto the stage. He had long black hair and wore a black and purple T-shirt and jeans. The second he appeared, the crowd erupted with cheering and clapping, many rising from their seats too.

Mabel looked around at those who had risen to cheer for Yuri, which was a far greater amount than those who bothered to even clap for Ryland. "Well,  _that's_  a lot of cheering."

"What can you say?" Gideon shrugged. "Yuri's the big name around here. His stunts are always what grabs the most attention to these events. If only he was as selfless as he was skilled."

" _These_  events?" Mabel asked, raising an eyebrow. "As in it's  _always_  this crowded for finals?"

" _Duh_. It's finals. Of course it's always crowded," he replied.

"Anyway, our three finalists are gonna start warming themselves up for the first round," the announcer continued. "While they do that, our people are gonna dismantle this stage, which was only set up for the purpose of this introduction and nothing more. The first round will begin in approximately fifteen minutes."

The crowd broke back out into casual chatter amongst themselves as Ryland, Yuri, and Ghost-Eyes walked backstage and another group of men began to dismantle the stage itself. Mabel watched; her suspicion about Ryland having grown too large for her to be able to dismiss it again.

"I'll be right back, girls. Mabel has questions!" she said as she stood up from her seat and quickly moved along the aisle before running down the steps and off the bleachers.

From there, she made her way around and found an easy entrance backstage among the side. She looked around as she walked past people helping set up the general event itself. Eventually, she spotted Ryland by a bike display, appearing to be setting up something.

"Ryland!" she called out to as she walked toward him.

He turned around and faced her, eyes narrowing slightly. "Mabel…what the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you-"

"I know," she cut off. "You didn't want me to come because it'd be too boring and nobody ever shows up. Well, I don't know about you, but that looks like a lot more than nobody," she told him as she gestured back outside.

Ryland awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck, knowing she had caught him in an act of suspicion. "Mabel, look…"

"Ryland, this is ridiculous," she continued, narrowing her eyes. "We haven't even been a thing for a week yet and you're already trying to push me away and lie to me?"

"What? I'm not trying to push you away," Ryland defended.

"Then why didn't you want me to come and see you?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Because…"

" _Ryland Reeds!_ " a voice called out from behind.

Ryland turned around and narrowed his eyes annoyedly as he was promptly approached by the person. "Yuri Wyatts…"

Yuri grinned as he walked up to Ryland, staring him down with confident, yet arrogant eyes. "Man, can't ya believe this is already our third time doin' this little rodeo of ours?" he spoke with a thick Jersey accent.

"Yeah. Time flies," Ryland bitterly agreed as he crossed his arms.

"Right? I mean, geez, feels like only yesterday when I first kicked ya ass into second place back in the February tourney," Yuri reminded him with a chuckle. "Not before ya face planted against the ramp and chipped ya tooth. Oh, and the April tourney when ya crashed ya bike into a tree?  _Classic_."

"I don't understand how you always find joy in my pain," Ryland told him.

Yuri laughed. "Because ya keep telling yourself  _again and again_  that you'll 'do better next time.' That you'll 'snag first place from me next time, for sure.' Well, where's  _your_  first place trophy, Ryland? Definitely not sitting in a glass case in my room. Nope, not at all."

He broke out laughing, leaving Ryland to just stand there, blood beginning to boil.

Mabel's eyes had progressively grown more unfriendly as she had listened to Yuri's words while watching from the side. Looking over at Ryland's face, she could tell that this was exactly the kind of talk he anticipated from Yuri, which meant this was exactly the type of person he was.

As Yuri calmed down his laughter, his eyes eventually caught Mabel and turned toward her. Interest piqued, he smiled at her.

" _Hey there_ ," he greeted. "Who's this, Ryland?"

"Mabel Pines," he replied, catching the look he gave her. "My  _girlfriend_."

"Such a shame," he said as he took Mabel's hand and shook it. "Yuri Wyatts. A pleasure to meetcha," he greeted before smoothly kissing her hand.

Instantly, Mabel pulled her hand away in disgust. " _Ew!_  Did you miss the part where he said I was his girlfriend?"

"My apologies. It's just the Jersey way of greeting," he claimed with an innocent shrug before turning back to Ryland. "Anyways, I'll catch ya during the first round, Ryland. It's the only first-anything you'll have any part of today."

He walked away laughing, leaving the two on their own. Ryland was trying hard to contain himself, his anger visibly showing through his reddening face and shaking fist.

"The Jersey way?" Mabel questioned as she wiped the back of her hand on her sweater. "My Grunkles are from Jersey and they say that people there only greet one another by punching each other in the face or stealing their wallets."

"Wait, so he did that just to kiss you?!" Ryland asked, finally snapping as he clenched both of his fists. "That  _sleaze!_  I'm gonna  _kill_  him!"

He took a step forward, to which Mabel quickly pulled his arm back. "Woah, Ryland! Calm down! I mean, as punchable as his face may be, there's no need to start trouble. Not  _now_ , at least."

" _Ugh!_ " Ryland groaned, dragging his hand over his face angrily. "Well,  _now_ you know why I didn't want you to come."

"Because of that jerk?"

"Well, not exactly," he said as he sat down on a nearby bench. "You already know that I've been BMXing for years before I even came to Gravity Falls. Well, ever since I got here, I've competed in these town tourneys and always made it to finals. But, I've always lost to Yuri. And every time I lose, it's because something goes wrong when I bike. I end up getting pretty hurt as you heard him say. And it's always embarrassing, and so I didn't want you to come and feel embarrassed because of me. I know you've seen me bike before and think I'm like…'amazing', but the truth is, I'm nothing compared to Yuri. And despite me getting to finals every time, I just can't beat him." He hung his head low as he continued. "And so, I just didn't want you to waste your time watching me mess up and fail like I usually do."

Mabel processed his words for a solid moment before smiling. "Aw, Ryland...I couldn't feel embarrassed about you. You're a great guy and you're amazing at what you do."

"Still nothing compared to Yuri."

"Forget about that sleazeball!" she encouraged. "Look, I brought my friends so we could all come out and support you! And win or lose, we're  _still_  going to support you. Because this is  _your_  hobby, Ryland, and you're great at it! You didn't start BMXing to beat Yuri one day. You started because you loved doing it. So if you can't beat Yuri, then forget about him and just do this for fun. Because in the end, having fun is what matters most."

Ryland thought about it for a moment and smiled. "Yeah...forget Yuri! I just gotta enjoy myself. Who cares about a stupid tournament? I mean, the grand prize is just a fifty dollar gift card to Samba Smoothie."

Mabel's eyes widened and mouth salivated as she thought as he told her this. " _Oh man, I love Samba Smoothie…_ "

"What'd you say?"

"I mean, that's the spirit!" Mabel corrected herself, trying to suppress her own personal desires. "You don't need to worry about a stupid gift card! I mean,  _maybe_ have it as a light goal...but, it's not as important as having fun!"

"You're right," he nodded as he stood up from the bench. "Thanks, Mabel. And I'm sorry for trying to hide this from you. I know we're still kind of just starting and that keeping this a secret was stupid and all. But it means a lot that even then, you're still willing to support me."

"Of course," Mabel nodded with a warm smile, holding his hands supportively. "Whatever happens, we'll be watching. You got this."

Ryland warmly smiled back at her, mentally expressing his thankfulness for having someone as supportive as Mabel by his side.

" _Ryland!_ " a voice called from the back.

He glanced behind him and back, pulling himself away from Mabel. "I gotta get ready. I'll talk to you later."

"Good luck!" Mabel waved.

" _Yuri!_ " the same voice called for.

"Yeah, I'll be right there, man!" Yuri called back.

Mabel looked over at Yuri by his bike setup, digging through his backpack. He noticed him pulling out a necklace, which he stared at in the palm of his hand for a moment before clenching it in his fist. He then zipped up his bag and looked up in her direction, to which she quickly turned her head just as he looked at her.

She promptly walked out to prevent engaging in any further conversation with him. Although, he watched as she did, narrowing his eyes somewhat suspiciously. He then threw his bag to the side and proceeded to head where he needed to be.

* * *

Ruffling through the bushes, Ford pushed through the leaves and poked his head through them. His eyes narrowed at what he saw within an open clearing.

"Here we are," he announced as he walked into the clearing. "This damned spot."

Dipper, Derrick, Evan, and Stan followed behind him. However, Stan was incredibly out of breath compared to the others.

"Finally," he said through his panting before face planting with the ground. "Now I can catch my breath."

" _Damned_  spot?" Dipper asked Ford, disregarding his other uncle. "Great Uncle Ford, what does that…?"

Dipper cut himself off as soon as he glanced over toward the middle of the clearing. His eyes widened and his skin went cold. A few mere feet away from him was the infamous stone petrification of Bill Cipher, which was still stuck in the ground with his hand sticking out to them.

"No…" he said in slight horror.

"I suppose the sight speaks for itself, huh?" Ford nodded, knowing just how his great-nephew felt.

"Bill's physical form? We haven't seen it since Summerween!" Dipper recalled. He knew it wasn't the first time he'd seen it, but it was still a sight to remained horrified by.

"What do you know? It looks ominous during the day too," Derrick claimed as he looked on at it, admitting to the unsettling sight.

" _You_  haven't seen it since Summerween," Ford clarified. "Though, I returned here with Fiddleford the other day for further study when designing the schematic for our weapon. Shaking the hand is the catalyst for bringing Bill back to his full potential. So studying his petrified form would likely give us more insight as to what it might take to destroy him."

"And what did you figure out?" Dipper asked.

"Frankly, not much. Though we did learn of one very odd trait that it exhibits…"

Ford then proceeding to kneel down and pick up a small stone from the ground. He then pitched it at the statue with all of his force. The stone flew toward the statue until it made a near-direct impact with it. To everyone's surprise, a sort of orange force field suddenly formed around the statue, which the stone hit and promptly bounced off of with a force stronger than the way Ford had thrown it.

Stan happened to be standing up from the ground at the same time that the stone deflected, and was almost hit as it flew right in his direction.

"WOAH!" he shouted as he barely managed to dodge the stone. "Hey, watch it, Poindexter!"

"What the…?" Dipper asked, both shocked and intrigued.

"It seems as though the petrification is covered and protected by some sort of barrier similar to that of the unicorn spell we used to protect the Shack," Ford explained. "Only difference is that this one is a kinetic barrier that deflects heavy impact instead of acting like an weirdness shield. It protects the weirdness instead of protecting against it."

"And how'd you figure  _that_  out?" Stan asked as he walked up toward him.

Ford awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, uh…"

* * *

A Few Days Ago

"I just don't know, F. We're getting nowhere with this statue so far," Ford told Fiddleford as he looked at a device that was connected to the statue via wires. "All of our data is just blank."

"Hmm…" Fiddleford wondered, thinking. "Maybe we should just try destroying it. I'd say the best that could happen is destroying Bill, whereas the worst would just be bringing about the end of the world."

"I'm not so sure that's a good idea," Ford replied with a reluctant look.

"Any idea is a good one if it works."

"Well, then I'm not sure that'll work."

"Only one way to find out then," Fiddleford said, gesturing toward the statue.

Ford sighed, still not keen on the idea. Nonetheless, he figured he may as well comply to Fiddleford's insistence. He promptly took out a hammer and ran toward the statue with a charging force, prepared to swing at it. He slammed his arms down as he came into contact with it. However, before making impact with the statue itself, his hammer struck down on a barrier that suddenly became visible to the eye. Without a second to react, the kinetic force from hitting the field deflected back to Ford's hammer itself, which promptly shot backward. He let out a brief scream as his body flung through the air for a moment before crashing violently into a tree. He slid down to the ground before laying still, expressing his agony through soft groans.

Fiddleford stood to the side, having watched the whole thing. His expression was nonchalant and his eyes were more analytical than concerned.

"Alright, new plan. You do it again, but this time, you hit it even  _harder_."

* * *

Present

"That's not important," Ford responded to Stan after making a recollection that he refused to tell to the others. "Anyway, as far as I'm aware, that barrier is impenetrable."

"So why are we even here then? To stare at it?" Derrick asked.

"Well, we're currently looking for Spearrels to retrieve one's pearl. And the last time I was here with Fiddleford, there happened to be multiple surrounding the statue before scurrying off as we arrived. So I brought us here because I figured it would be our best bet at finding one," Ford explained as he looked around the empty clearing. "However, it doesn't look like there's any around at the moment, which is quite odd because this spot was full of them yesterday."

"Well, first things first- you wanna tell us what a  _Spur-rrel_  even is?" Derrick asked, growing a bit irritated at Ford's presumption that they had any idea what he was even talking about. "Never heard of them before and my mind keeps imagining sentient cowboy boots." He paused for a moment. "Yeah, I kinda wanna stop thinking about that."

"Spearrel is a bit of a name play that I made up myself. They're a cross between a squirrel and a…" he explained before looking over toward the statue, eyes bulging in horror. " _EVAN!_ "

"A squirrel and an Evan?" Derrick asked, raising an eyebrow. "Yeah, I'm not seeing the name play."

Seeing Ford's concerned look, everybody else glanced over at the statue, only to display horrified expressions of their own. Right in front of them, Evan's hand was found joined with the statue's. He appeared to have been pulling on it before, but nonetheless, he was still shaking the hand. He glanced back over at them at the call of his name, his expression immediately displaying one that said he had been caught.

"EVAN! WHAT'RE YOU DOING?!" Dipper exclaimed as he ran over toward him behind Ford.

"That kid is insane!" Stan shouted, placing his hands amongst the sides of his head.

"Wait, it's not what it looks like!" Evan tried to tell them as he let go of the hand.

"You shook the statue's hand!" Ford said as he towered over the boy. "Are you  _trying_  to doom us all?!"

"I wasn't trying to shake it! I was pulling on it!" Evan tried to clarify, growing panicked himself. "You said it had a barrier that reflected kinetic movement and heavy impact! So I figured pulling on it might be enough force to break it off from the rest of the statue!"

"You still made contact with the statue's hand!" Ford continued to press, growing more anxious each second. "It's a still figure! You don't have to actually  _shake_  the hand! You just need to make contact with it, which you've done! Which means…" His eyes bulged again as he turned his head back. " _STANLEY!_ "

Stan's skin went cold as he came to the same realization as Ford. "Oh no... _oh no!_ " He shouted as he covered his head with his hands in panic.

"Grunkle Stan, no!" Dipper shouted.

"Stanley, are you okay?!" Ford asked as he ran over to his brother, placing his hands on his shoulders.

"I feel fine!" he admitted as he continued to keep his eyes shut and his head covered. "I'm just bracing myself!"

Ford paused. "Wait...you feel  _fine?_ "

Stan opened his eyes and looked back up at him. "I mean, yeah. The walking killed my feet, but overall, I feel pretty good." He stopped for a moment and glanced around his surroundings. "Getting kinda hungry. Is it lunch yet?"

Ford's horror had turned into confusion by the lack of reaction from his brother. He glanced back and forth between him and the statue, raising an eyebrow. "The hell?"

"Shouldn't there be like...something happening?" Derrick asked as he looked around at the sky. "Or is the end of the world this bland?"

"I don't even think anything happened," Ford assumed. "But I don't understand. Evan may not have intentionally shaken the hand, but he still gripped it."

"What's shaking the hand supposed to do again?" Evan asked.

"As far as I'm aware, it's supposed to restore Bill to his physical form," Ford explained as he pulled out his gold-colored mind scanner from his coat. He aimed it at Stan's head and pulled the trigger. The light flashed yellow for a moment before going red again. "But Stan's mind still shows anomalous activity, which means Bill is still in his head."

"I don't get it. I thought Bill wanted someone to shake his statue's hand to free him. If Evan shook his hand, why has nothing happened?" Dipper asked.

"He wanted me to shake his hand when he held Stan hostage. But when he held  _me_ hostage, he wanted one of  _you_  to do it instead," Ford recalled. "I figured that meant anybody could shake his hand to fulfill his wants."

"Which goes back to what Derrick said that night," Dipper said as he glanced over at Derrick. "If it's been out in the middle of the forest all this time, how is it that not one random person came along to shake his hand and unintentionally free him? Is it possible that only certain people can set Bill free?"

"Anything's possible at this point," Ford replied as he put the mind analyzed back into his coat. "Though, going by that possibility, what exactly makes Evan differ from us?"

"He is the youngest out of all of us," Dipper said as he looked over at him. "Is it an age thing?"

"Pfft,  _yeah_. You must sixteen years or older to bring about the end of the world," Derrick joked.

At that moment, there was a sudden ruffling in the bushes that attracted everyone's attention. Ford stared at the ruffling bushes intently, narrowing his eyes as he realized what might've been there.

"We'll have to save this discussion for later. I think we have a Spearrel in the area," Ford said a quieter voice as he began to slowly creep up on the bushes. "As I was saying before, the name play comes from the fact that it's a type of squirrel that produces pearls within the fur of its tail. A simple, yet, odd enough characteristic for a mammal species."

"Why do we need one of its pearls for them?" Dipper asked.

"Can we sell 'em?" Stan asked greedily.

"The pearls themselves have a special type of unworldly conductivity; a type which we need to retrieve to use as a base for a power source," Ford explained.

"And why are they so common in this area?" Evan asked as he looked around the clearing.

"They usually aren't. I typically find them around the bottom edges of the hanging cliffs. Usually mossy areas," Ford explained. "Finding so many in one spot around the statue the other day was a surprise. It was like they were drawn to it…"

He very slowly and cautiously dug his hands through a bush, pulling it apart to look inside. Inside, he spotted a squirrel with gray fur that stared right back at him.

"There…" Ford whispered with cautious eyes.

"Oh man. A grey squirrel. How weird is that?" Stan asked sarcastically.

At that moment, though, the Spearrel let out an ear-piercing screech that sounded like an eagle amplified a hundred times.

"AHHHH!" Stan yelled as he and everybody else covered their ears up in response to the screech.

"They are also susceptible to using a  _very_ deafening screech when they feel threatened!" Ford yelled out to the others as he pressed his hands against his ears as hard as he could.

"THANKS FOR THE WARNING!" Derrick sarcastically yelled back.

The Spearrel's screech eventually stopped, to which it then proceeded to scurry off through the forest. Everybody else got up on their feet and watched as it got away.

"Don't let it get away!" Ford shouted before running after it. "C'mon!"

Dipper and Derrick immediately ran along with him, to which Stan slowly began to follow, letting out an annoyed sigh. "Oh, great. Now we're  _running_."

He then started running behind them, though at a slower and more exhausted pace. However, unbeknownst to them, Evan stayed back by the statue. Having examined the Spearrel before it took off, he turned toward the statue and walked up to it. He then tore off a long vine hanging off the arm, stuffing it in his satchel before catching up with the others.

As Ford chased the Spearrel down through the forest, eventually, it decided to run up a tree. It hopped into a defensive stance as it looked down at Ford, who approached the trunk of the tree cautiously after a brief chase.

"Dammit," Ford simply said, slightly annoyed.

"A squirrel's first instinct is to run up a tree. What a surprise," Derrick claimed just as he, Dipper, and Stan caught up to him.

"Sixer's got a big brain, but he ain't the fastest with it sometimes," Stan said as he leaned against a tree, trying to catch his breath.

"Is there any way to get it to come down?" Dipper asked.

"Uh…" Ford thought for a moment. "Here, Spearrel! It's okay! Be a good Spearrel and come down now!"

Stan stared at his brother for a moment before facepalming. "You've got to be kidding me."

"I'm trying all I know!" Ford said defensively.

"So,  _nothing?_ "

"You wanna give it a shot then?" Ford asked, standing back for his brother to give it a try.

"You want a squirrel to come down from a tree? You gotta give it something it wants. For example... _ehem!_ " Stan said as he calmly walked up to the tree. He then pulled out a pulled out a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and offered it to the Spearrel in the tree. "Want twenty bucks?"

The Spearrel then let out another vicious screech at him, prompting everyone to cover their ears yet again.

"What?! That ain't enough for you?" Stan asked angrily. " _Why…you picky_ …I bet you're a Northwest pet!"

"Sit down, Stanley," Ford annoyedly told him, growing tired of his ineffective involvement.

"Yeah, okay," Stan complied, taking a step back and sitting at the edge of a tree.

Ford sighed, attempting to think but couldn't come up with a solution himself. "Any ideas, Dipper?"

"Sorry, Great Uncle Ford, but I got nothing," Dipper admitted.

"Alright, well, I didn't want it to come to this, but I suppose we have no other choice," Ford said before suddenly diving a hand into his coat and equipping a crossbow.

"Geez…" Dipper said, shocked that this was the road that his uncle was legitimately considering.

"Not gonna lie, I was thinking that but I figured you guys would tear me apart if I suggested it, so I just kept quiet," Derrick admitted as he glanced around at everyone. "That said, I'm  _not_ against this."

"Trust me, I'm not a fan of it," Ford assured them. "But desperate times come for desperate measures. With daylight burning by the minute, figured it's for the best that we just get this out of the way now."

Dipper still remained hesitant as he watched Ford aim the crossbow at the Spearrel, but then figured he may have been right to an extent. They could potentially get into a million more chases with the Spearrel and bring about further delay in resolving Stan's condition, and that was ultimately something they couldn't afford to risk getting any worse.

"Whatever works, I guess," he said with a sigh as he turned away.

" _Wait!_ "

Everybody turned around and watched as Evan ran his way over toward them, finally catching up. He appeared slightly frantic as he watched as Ford was about to shoot the Spearrel.

"Don't shoot it!" he urged as he arrived. "There's another way!"

"There is?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I wasn't sure what Mr. Stanford meant when he said Spearrel, but after hearing his description and seeing it for myself, I figured it out," he explained. "It's an anomaly that I personally named the Screaming Vine Squirrel."

"That's a better name than  _Spearrel_ honestly," Stan said with a chuckle.

"They're known for their ear-piercing shriek to fend off predators," Evan continued to explain as he dug through his satchel and pulled out the vine he had ripped from the statue. "They're also extremely attracted to overgrowth. Stuff like old vines and moss, which the Bill statue is covered in. Which is probably why they've become so drawn to that area, as Stanford said. There's not much overgrowth otherwise in this part of the woods."

"Attracted to overgrowth? Really?" Ford asked, lowering his crossbow as he processed this new information.

"Extremely. It's their main diet," Evan nodded as he held the vine out to the Spearrel in the tree.

The Spearrel entered a defensive stance as Evan held the vine out to it. However, it began to quickly grow curious, eyeballing the vine in his hands in a twitchy manner as a normal squirrels do. It eventually started to slowly make its way down the tree stump before hopping directly into Evan's hands as they held the vine. As it began to eat directly the vine itself, everyone else stood back and watched in awe.

"Holy…" Ford remarked, absolutely stunned and impressed.

Evan smiled. "Case and point."

"Evan, man! Way to go!" Dipper cheered on with a chuckle.

Ford approached the back of the Spearrel as it was distracted by the vine and carefully pulled a small, shiny red pearl hidden within the fur of its back. The Spearrel didn't even appear to take notice or harm to his action and simply continued to eat the vine without issue.

"Fascinating. I wasn't aware they exhibited such a trait," Ford claimed as he examined the creature.

Evan then held his hand to the ground, allowing the Spearrel to promptly hop off his hands and scurry back into the wilderness with the vine. He brushed his hands off and stood confidently in front of the others.

"You see? And nothing had to die."

"Could take or leave this one, but I do hope I get to see something get shot with a crossbow at some point. Oh man...what if  _I_ shot something with a crossbow? That'd be sweet!" Derrick fantasized for a moment before getting elbowed in the shoulder by Dipper, who glared at him. "Nonetheless...good work, kid."

"Good work, indeed, Evan," Ford agreed as he stored the red pearl in a small container that he then stuffed into his coat. "I know what you've given was a basic fact, but your knowledge still impresses me. I wasn't even aware of a Screaming Vine Squirrel's attraction to overgrowth and I've been in contact with them multiple times. I often gave up on the ones that climbed up trees. You've done all your research through a screen and yet, you still managed to learn something that I never could.

Evan appreciated his compliments but figured to keep a sense of humbleness. "Well, as you said, it  _is_ basic stuff."

"Nonetheless, I might need to see how exactly you do your own research one of these days. A balance between fieldwork and computer research could be the key to unlocking Gravity Falls' greatest secrets."

"Yeah, of course! I'd totally be willing to share my findings and how I came across them one of these days," Evan nodded.

"Brilliant. As for right now, we have the pearl. Now, we should be getting a move on to the next stop," Ford said as he began walking through the forest again. "We have a long walk from here to the waterfall."

" _Aaaand_  we're walking again. Fantastic…" Stan moped as he stood up from the ground and began following his brother.

"Man, getting hands-on with Gravity Falls weirdness is great," Evan claimed enthusiastically as he followed behind Stan, turning back once to look over at Dipper. "Seriously, thanks for bringing me along, Dipper. I think I finally found the first activity outside my room that I actually  _enjoy_."

"Heh, no problem, man," Dipper replied with a slightly awkward chuckle as he stood in place beside Derrick. "Great...great work."

"You good, man?" Derrick asked him.

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

"Because I know the look you get when you're jealous," he said with a smug look.

"Jealous?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Great Uncle praises little kid for knowing something that neither he nor his super smart great-nephew knew," he pointed out. "You're worried he's gonna steal your spotlight."

"What? No! I'm not jealous," Dipper assured him. "Evan did something respectable and helpful and got rightfully praised for it." He thought for a moment. "Sure, it's more praise than some of the other times Ford's given me credit, but I mean, this isn't  _about_ me. Evan deserved credit. He's got talent and more than  _you_ too."

"Hey, if this isn't about  _you_ , then in no way is this about  _me_  either," Derrick addressed before walking off, following the others far ahead of them. "But I'll take your word for it."

Dipper continued to stand in place as he watched him walk away. For a moment, he thought about what he said before brushing it off as ridiculous. He respected Evan's intelligence and had no reason to think he would replace him in the eyes of his own Great Uncle.

_There's nothing to be jealous about. Derrick doesn't know what he's talking about._  he thought to himself as he continued his way through the woods with everyone else.

* * *

Ghost-Eyes had been up for the first one up for the first round of the BMX tournament. Everyone set their eyes on him as he went through the first arrangement, which was a very basic setup for the first round. The goal was to show off one's skills the best one could given the course and the three judges would score based on the level of impressiveness.

Forty seconds into Ghost-Eyes' sixty-second run, he pulled off a few average tricks and spins, but nothing that the judges could call off as impressive. His riding was very sluggish, which appeared to be due to his large size on top of a smaller bike that didn't seem to make up for it. He was visibly struggling to control his turns and even his tricks seemed barely successful. However, he continued to push forward, beginning to make his way back toward the main ramp.

"And it looks like Ghost-Eyes is about to go for the ramp to finish his first round," the bruised and beaten announcer called out over the microphone.

However, at that moment, Ghost-Eyes pressed down on his right pedal hard enough to enough to snap it right off the bike.

"What the-?" he questioned before looking down. He quickly noticed his problem, but only just before looking back up ahead to realize he was still heading for the ramp. "Oh  _NO!_ "

_SLAM!_

Seconds after his realization, Ghost-Eyes' body violently planted against the ramp. His bike was also totaled from the impact, with various pieces spread out amongst the bottom of the ramp. The crowd winced at the sight in reaction. Although, the judges just displayed nonchalant looks that lacked any sympathy or impression.

"Ohh! That's gonna leave a mark," the announcer remarked as Ghost-Eyes stood back up and brushed himself off, having received light scratches.

_ZZZZZZ!_ the alarm buzzed, signaling time running out.

"And that's the end of Ghost-Eyes' first run," the announcer responded before glancing over at the judges' table. Let's see what the judges think."

The judges quickly exchanged looks with one another before holding up three numbered signs. From left to right, their scores read 4, 5, and 3.

"Oooh...rough start for Ghost-Eyes."

Ghost-Eyes processed the scores for a moment before narrowing his eyes angrily. "DANG IT! STUPID BIKE! YOU'RE TOO SMALL!" he yelled furiously as he picked up the remains of the bike and tossed them out of the bike park with all of his strength. " _ARRGGGH!_ "

Realizing Ghost-Eyes' temper, Gideon quickly stood up and called out to him. "It's okay, Ghost-Eyes! Your bike may be small, but your heart is big! Remember that!"

Ghost-Eyes' had his fists clenched tightly as he looked up at Gideon. Processing his words though, he inhaled deeply and tried to maintain control of himself as he proceeded to walk out of the course.

" _There's nothing greater than the power of friendship. There's nothing greater than the power of friendship. There's nothing greater than the power of friendship…_ " he quietly repeated to himself.

"There you go, Ghost-Eyes! You got this next round!" Gideon cheered supportively.

Behind Gideon, Mabel was watching the ongoing preparations taking place on the other side of the course. There, she could see Ryland beside his bike strapping his helmet on as he was being spoken to by one of the tournament runners.

"Looks like Ryland's up next," she said to the other girls.

"Perfect. Video opportunity!" Candy said enthusiastically as she held up her camera in preparation for the round.

Gideon glanced back at Mabel, hesitant to ask a question he had been pondering. Despite his hesitation, his curiosity got the better of him.

" _Ehem_ …" he cleared his throat, grabbing Mabel's attention. "So, erm, how long have you and this Ryland fellow been... _acquainted?_ "

"Oh, not too long. We only just met earlier this month, but we starting going out a few days-" she explained before cutting herself off once she realized it was  _Gideon_  who was asking her this. "Wait a second...you're not still into me, are you?"

"W-What?!"

"Don't act like you don't remember our history, Gideon," she reminded him with narrowed eyes. "I'm warning you now not to try anything funny. I already had to kick a jealous gnome's butt and I won't hesitate to kick a creepy child's next."

"It was just an honest question!" he assured her. "Trust me, my darli- I mean... _Mabel_. I've already accepted that we just weren't meant to be. I'm willing to settle for being just friends."

"Look, you may have helped my brother and I that one time with Mr. Buttface Nessman, but you still have a lot of trust left to gain from us before we even  _begin_  to consider you a friend," Mabel told him.

"Fair enough. The road to redemption has never been easy," Gideon accepted. "But  _mark my words_ , Mabel Pines. One day, you'll see that I'm  _worthy_ of trust and friendship. One day, I'll redeem myself. You'll see," he assured her before creepily rubbing his hands together. " _You'll see…_ "

Mabel raised a skeptical eyebrow. "The creepy whispering isn't very assuring."

Gideon tightened up upon her calling him out. He sighed. "Still trying to break that habit."

"Now, we have Ryland Reeds, coming up for his first round," the announcer spoke over the microphone.

Eyes throughout the crowd looked in Ryland's direction as he stepped out onto the edge of the course with his bike. As he adjusted his helmet strap once more, Yuri stood out, watching from the sidelines.

"Good luck, Ryland," he told him mockingly. "You're going to need it."

Ryland glanced over at him and confidently smirked. "Much appreciated, Yuri."

As he looked back at the course, he failed to notice Yuri's insulting eyes grow unappreciative of Ryland's confidence. He backed into the sidelines and walked off as he stared Ryland down at the corner of his eye.

"YOU GOT THIS, RYLAND!" Mabel called out supportively from the bleachers.

"SUPPORTIVE SCREAMING!" Grenda added.

Ryland chuckled as he looked up at the girls, shaking his head somewhat uncomfortably despite his appreciation for their support. He then got on his bike and prepared himself to start.

"Ryland's got sixty seconds on the clock on the basic stunt track," the announcer claimed as he watched the timer, which eventually started. " _Aaaand_  he's on!"

Ryland immediately pushed himself down onto the course as the timer began. He rode toward the ramp at a fast speed and started his run off with a backflip, which seemed to wake up a majority of the crowd due to the lack of an impression that Ghost-Eyes had left previously. Several people woah-ed and woo-ed as Ryland went along performing a variety of different tricks among a basic course. Tricks ranging from holding onto his seat or raising his feet from the pedals.

While Ryland had shown off his skill to Mabel before, she had never seen his performance on an actual course and ramp. She was immediately impressed, yet, anxious at his riskier-looking clips. She had faith in his skill but still hoped not to witness him snap his own neck on the concrete. Nonetheless, she and her friends cheered him on the whole way through.

"He's killing it!" Mabel exclaimed excitedly.

"This type of performance would make well for the opening shot!" Candy claimed as she filmed the action with her camera.

"DON'T GET DISTRACTED, RYLAND!" Grenda shouted, oblivious to the delivery of her own words. "YOU DON'T WANT TO CRASH!"

"Grenda!" Mabel alarmed.

"Sorry," Grenda awkwardly apologized as she realized what she was doing.

"This is a solid run for Ryland so far!" the announcer remarked as he glanced back between Ryland and the timer. "He only has ten seconds left this round."

At that moment, Ryland knew how he wanted to end off his run. He aimed for the ramp once more with complete determination. Full speed, he rode up the ramp and soared up into the air. With a secured height, he faced the sky and threw his feet off of his pedals as he held on tightly to his handlebars. He let the rest of his body hang out in the open air, completely separated from his bike, allowing himself to take the stance of a superhero flying up into the air. The only difference was that he was holding his bike out in front of him.

It was a very risky trick, and the crowd reacted accordingly as he pulled it off. Shocked gasps and fearful cries came from several people. Mabel remained composed, but even she felt chills running down her spine as she witnessed him pull the trick off.

As the bike then came rushing down backward, to which Ryland promptly pulled himself back onto his seat and his feet placed firmly upon his pedals again. His wheels touched round, quickly rushing down the ramp and rolling out onto the course backward. The crowd promptly erupted into cheers.

"Holy…" Gideon remarked in shock.

"THAT'S MY MAN!" Mabel cheered, excitedly rising from her seat along with her friends.

"WOW! An impressive backward Superman!" the announcer called out enthusiastically. "And with only three seconds left to spare. What a flawless run for Ryland!"

All of the sudden, as Ryland rode backward, his bike made a hard lean to the right, forcing him down along with it.

" _WOAH!_ " he reacted.

Within a few seconds, he found the right side of his body running against the ground as his bike continued to move. His right arm, right leg, and the right side of his face painfully grinded against the concrete ground for a solid few seconds before his bike came to a complete stop, throwing him off and sending him rolling an extra few feet away.

"Ooooh!" the crowd winced.

_ZZZZZZ!_

"Ouch. Well...an  _almost_  flawless run…" the announcer finished.

Mabel covered her mouth with her hands in shock. "Oh no…"

"Well, that probably wouldn't be the best opening shot…" Candy said as she awkwardly lowered her camera.

"Do it again! I wasn't looking!" Grenda shouted with a mouthful of hot dog as she faced forward.

Ryland began to pull himself up from the ground, groaning in pain as he did. He had received several long scratches and knicks along his right arm and right leg. He had not yet analyzed the scratches himself, though he was well aware they were there.

What he was less aware of was the longer, deeper, and bloodier scratch amongst his right cheek. It was the most serious looking injury he appeared to have received, but he hadn't seemed to have even noticed yet. As he sat up, he looked around in confusion, wondering how he had suddenly crashed the way he did.

"Agh. The hell happened there?"

"Unfortunately for Ryland, that crash might affect his performance score with the judges," the announcer claimed. "Nonetheless, let's see what they have to say."

Ryland rubbed his scratched up arm as he looked over at the judges, who all exchanged brief looks with one another before raising their scores.

6, 6, 5

"An average score. Not bad, but it could've been better," the announcer summarized.

Ryland stood with a look of outraged shock for a moment. Quickly, however, the look changed into disappointment with himself.

"Dammit," he said to himself annoyedly before picking up his bike and dragging it along with him. Everybody watched as he made his walk of shame across the course back to the sidelines.

Mabel looked on at him with remorse, feeling terrible for the fact that his biggest fear actually managed to come true. Figuring he needed an ounce of support to pick him back up, she stood up from her seat and made her way down the bleachers.

"Hold on, girls," she called back to her friends.

She quickly ran down and head toward the sidelines where he was heading. She then positioned herself at a fence post, patiently waiting for Ryland to pass by as he walked by. Soon enough, he made his way along the sidelines where he caught Mabel's eye.

"Hey!" she greeted cheerfully as an attempt to raise his spirits, if even barely.

Ryland sighed as he stopped in front of her. "How bad did that look?"

" _Whaaaat?_   _Pffft!_  It wasn't  _that_  bad," she told him.

"Hey, man!" a man at the lowest seat of the bleachers called out from right above the two. "Are you okay? That looked fall look pretty bad!"

Swiftly, Mabel swiped a hot dog from a vendor standing close beside her and stuffed it in the man's mouth from below as a means of getting him to be quiet. She then turned back to Ryland and put her cheery smile back on.

"Again, it wasn't  _that_  bad!" she repeatedly "It was just a small mistake that could've happened to anyone else."

"Yeah, and anyone else could've probably avoided it too," Ryland said dejectedly.

"Aw, cheer up. The tricks themselves were awesome!" she assured him. "One mistake doesn't make you any less than one of the best BMXers I've ever seen. Don't beat yourself up over it."

"Next, we have Yuri Wyatts, two-time Gravity Falls BMX Tournament winner," the announcer spoke over the mic at that moment. "Let's see how he kicks off his road to becoming a  _three_ -time champion."

Mabel and Ryland glanced over at the edge of the course and spotted Yuri standing by, clicking on his helmet and strapping it on tightly. He glanced at Ryland at the corner of his eye and looked forward again as he got on his bike, grinning.

"Sixty seconds on the clock... _aaand_  he's off!"

Yuri has quickly sent himself biking down into the course and proceeded to speed his way toward the ramp. With the full intention to beat Ryland's beginning, he drove his way up the ramp into the air at a fast speed and pulled off a double backflip before riding back down.

The crowd riled up at the stunt, but Yuri's presence was already enough excitement for them due to his local status.

" _YURI! YURI!_ " they chanted.

He continued to go back and forth, riding up the ramp at high speeds. All of his tricks were extraordinary. At one point, he had performed a front flip while holding onto his seat with both hands. Another point had him spin his handlebar at the same time he did a spin in his seat mid-air. It was a wonder how he pulled the tricks off, as it seemed each time that he only barely had enough airtime to be able to do each one.

Mabel had no reason to respect Yuri after her first meeting with him and seeing how he treated Ryland. However, even she couldn't deny that the tricks were unlike anything she had seen. Each trick bested the ones Ryland had done, which clearly seemed to be the point. Regardless, she stared at him with her jaw hung open in utter disbelief.

_ZZZZZZ!_

"Wowzers…" Mabel remarked with wide eyes just as Yuri finished his round.

"HOLY HELL! And Yuri continues to impress! Absolutely outstanding first run!" the announcer claimed enthusiastically. "Let's see what our judges think!"

Mabel and Ryland glanced over at the judge seats, noticing them all exchanging words with one another in a seemingly pleased way. They then raised their number cards with glee.

9, 9, 8

"Twenty-six!" the announcer totaled. "A great first round for Yuri! He takes lead, leaving Ryland in second with seventeen, and Ghost-Eyes in last with twelve. A solid lead, but anything's possible this early on. For now, we'll just start readying up for Round Two."

Ryland stood open-mouthed for a moment, shocked by Yuri's success at besting him once again alongside his injury. A single glance from Mabel and she could immediately tell what he was feeling. They both then watched as Yuri made his way past the two with his bike. He took off his helmet and looked over at Ryland, smirking.

"Second place, huh? Not bad," he remarked. "Though, I don't consider someone as brainless as  _Ghost-Eyes_  competition. As far as I'm concerned, this is just between  _me_ and  _you_ , Ryland. And right now, I'm not sure there's much left for  _you_ to prove."

Ryland clenched his fists as Yuri spoke, growing progressively angrier each second. Mabel could feel his anger increasing without even having to look at him.

"Anyway, have fun with your scratches, Ryland," Yuri insulted as he passed by, suddenly breaking out laughing as he looked at Ryland's face. "I can already imagine the scar that one on your face will leave."

Ryland's anger suddenly halted as he processed Yuri's words. He put two fingers up to the side of his face and felt the deep scratch, which had been unbeknownst to him until that moment. As he looked down at his fingers and frowned at the blood he had drawn. He let out a disappointed sigh before dropping his bike dejectedly. He then turned away and walked off dejectedly, not even paying Mabel any glance.

"Ryland…" Mabel said sympathetically, reaching her hand out for him as he walked off.

Despite this, he continued on his way, leaving her alone and not daring to look her back in the eye.

 


	37. Ryland On Wheels: Part 2

Not too far along the outside of the bike park, Ryland sat by himself amongst the curb of a lone sidewalk entering the woods. There he sat with his chin on the palm of his hand, fingers spread across the left side of his face, which was unmarked by injury compared to the blood that ran down from the deep scratch the ran along the right side. He felt it sting as the occasional breeze blew into it, but he had enough tolerance to ignore it, continuing to sulk as he mindlessly stared ahead of him.

"Hey! There you are!" Mabel's cheery voice suddenly popped behind him. He didn't even need to turn around to see her, as she slid and sat right next to him. "I've been looking for you. Why'd you walk off? You did well!"

"No, I didn't. I did average," he said with an eye roll.

She chuckled. "Hey, I mean, I'd rather get a D on a test than an F, you know?"

Ryland then got up and proceeded to start walking off away from her, wiping cheeriness clean off Mabel's face.

"Wait! I didn't mean it like that! That wasn't a D-level stunt!" she quickly cleared up as she stood up herself, trying to run after him. "Ryland…"

"I know what you meant," he said, stopping to face her again. "It's just...that's  _exactly_  what I didn't want you to see."

"Oh, c'mon. It was just a…"

"...a small mess-up," he finished for her. "I know. But, this is finals, and so, this is the last place I wanna mess up. Especially in front of you. Now you get to watch me get hurt and grow progressively more embarrassed about me," he said glumly as he put his fingers up to the right side of his face, accidentally touching his scratch directly, causing him to wince. " _Ow!_ "

Just as he was about to dwell on the pain, Mabel reached into her pocket purse and pulled out a bright blue bandaid, slapping it right on the scratch, perfectly covering it.

" _Boop!_ "

Ryland found the action very sudden and unexpected, and it definitely hurt him, but the pain quickly faded after a few seconds. He then lightly pressed his fingers against the bandaid, feeling it. The light pressure still stung through the bandaid but it didn't hurt nearly as much.

"Ryland, trust me. I'm the last person you should be worrying about feeling embarrassed about you," Mabel told him with a look of confidence. "What you do is so cool! It also just so happens to be occasionally painful too. Accidents happen. I'm smart enough to understand that and I'm too silly in my own right to care about feeling embarrassed. So stop worrying what I think. You just do you, and whether you have a mistake or two million along the way doesn't matter to me."

Ryland smiled at her sentiment. "Thanks. I guess it's just...I really  _hate_  Yuri. Like...a lot. And even when trying to do this for myself, I can't help but feel worthless whenever he beats me. If it was just friendly competition, I'd obviously feel different. But the dude's a jerk and treats these local tourneys like they're the big leagues or something. I just can't enjoy myself as long as he's here."

"I know how you feel," Mabel said empathetically. "Rivalries are stupid. I've had one before. I still sort of have one with my brother's dumb friend, though he's another case altogether. But I had my own Yuri before. Killed my mood every time she was around. Always ruined everything. But then I realized one day that she wasn't as bad as she seemed. Underneath her awfulness, there was a genuine heart that was covered up by her parents and large weekly allowances. I know you hate Yuri, but maybe you should try being nice to him. Maybe there's a chance he's not that bad either."

"Be nice? To  _Yuri?_ " Ryland loathed the thought alone. "I'm not so sure that's a good idea. He's not exactly someone I'd call 'vulnerable.'"

"You never know! And c'mon,  _everyone_  has a weak spot!"

Ryland sighed hesitantly. "Alright. I guess I can give it a shot. I mean, maybe you're right. Maybe he really  _does_  have a nice side to him. I mean, I doubt it, but who knows?"

"Hey, whoever said killing someone with kindness wasn't an effective strategy?" Mabel questioned as she began walking with him back to the park. "Worst case scenario, you have a Derrick on your hands."

* * *

Ford led Dipper, Derrick, Evan, and Stan through the darker depths of the forest until they came across a cavern entrance embedded in the side of a cliff. A lit lantern in hand used to guide the way, he walked toward the entrance.

"This is it," he said as he held up his arm holding the lantern inside the cavern. "The crushroom cavern. It's here where I've found the town's greatest abundance of crushrooms."

"More name-play, I see," Derrick commented. "Sounds like a bunch of living mushrooms that have the ability to crush people to death."

"Actually, that's exactly what they are," Ford confirmed.

Derrick paused his emotionless expression, unsure how to react for a moment. "Welp, I don't think I've ever wanted to be more wrong before now."

"Instead of a cap, they have giant solidified fists that they repeatedly slam against the ground as a defensive maneuver," Ford explained as he began guiding the others through the cavern.

"Oh, I know what you're referring to!" Evan suddenly realized. "This was one of the first anomalies I researched. Funnily enough, I knew about these before I knew about the gnomes. I named them  _Fistgus_. Though, I think your name wins this time."

"Haha.  _Fistgus_ , eh?" Ford chuckled. "If my memory serves me correct, that may have been an initial working name of mine several years ago. "

"Great minds think alike," Derrick commented as he playfully nudged Dipper in the arm. "Am I right?"

Dipper shoved Derrick's arm away annoyedly. "You're not getting anywhere."

"Anyhow, crushrooms tend to grow large within areas with little to no light," Ford continued to explain as he looked around the cavern. "So the largest ones tend to be in the very back, where absolutely no light reaches from the cave opening."

"And what're we looking for again?" Dipper asked.

"A rare purple one," Ford replied. "They exhibit a certain, should I say,  _magical_  internal structure that can be made into a fine paste that I'll mix with the squirrel pearl to create a sustaining magic energy source. They're an uncommon occurrence, however, I've almost always managed to find one within the depths of this cave."

"And if we don't?" Stan asked, lacking any thrill or motivation for blindly walking through a dark cave full of giant mushrooms that could crush them.

"Then we don't and we have to keep looking?" Ford replied as though the answer was already clear. "Gosh, Stanley. I don't understand why you insist on being so bitter and negative. Especially during a case in which we're trying to  _help_  you."

Stan's sweaty face scrunched up exhaustively as he turned to Ford. "Well, pardon my bitterness,  _brother_. But with everything going on, it's not exactly easy not to be bitter in the first place."

"I know you're frustrated, Stanley. But please! Constantly reminding us is not going to benefit anyone. Just bear with us," Ford pleaded. "You're a grown man complaining about doing too much walking and running."

"Should've just gotten this chain off me and left me back at the Shack then," Stan suggested, remaining as bitter as can be. "Wouldn't have to put up with me complaining otherwise."

"Grunkle Stan, c'mon!" Dipper shouted, growing irritated by Stan's blatant complaining.

"Dammit, Stan! I already told you why I can't-"

Ford cut himself off upon a sudden realization, even stopping in his tracks in the cave. His angered eyes then turned concerned as he looked at his brother.

"Stan, do you remember us having this discussion already this morning?"

Stan visibly thought for a moment, stroking his chin. "Yeah, kind of. Didn't I make fun of your watch or something?"

Ford stared at Stan, thinking to himself as his concern grew.

"Grunkle Stan, can't you see we're trying our hardest to help you?" Dipper asked with his eyes narrowed at his great uncle. "Why do you have to keep acting so selfish?"

"Hang on, Dipper. I don't think he's trying to be selfish," Ford intervened.

"Huh?" Dipper questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm starting to believe that Bill has finally regenerated enough in Stan's head from the last confrontation to start negatively influencing his mental processes again," Ford explained, putting a hand on the side of Stan's head, examining it. "That includes his memory and behavior. Neither of which seem to be Stan's strongest at this moment."

"Nonsense, Sixer. I'm fine," Stan assured him, pushing his hand away. "Just my usual morning crankiness."

"Stan, what were the names of our parents?"

Stan considered Ford's question for noticeably longer than he knew he should've. "Uh…Philadelphia and Karry, right?"

"There you have it," Ford said, turning toward the others.

"No, wait! I know this!" Stan attempted to reassure, thinking as hard as he could. " _Filbrick and Caryn!_ There! You see! Memory's all good! Nothing to worry about!"

"Alright," Ford shrugged. "What state do we live in?"

"Are you kidding? That's easy!" Stan confidently said with a chuckle. "The sunny state of Florida!"

His far more telling response got odd looks from everyone. Stan himself continued to display a confident look after his response until he suddenly came to the realization himself.

"Oh. Man, I guess I'm not well after all."

Derrick cautiously backed up a large step away from Stan. "Does this mean he's going to try to murder us any second now?"

"I want to believe that Bill hasn't regenerated  _that_  much. Which in that case, I think we still have time before his true reawakening," Ford claimed, cautiously looking on at Stan. "But, that time looks to be running out by the minute. Which means we need to hurry and get back to finding that purple crushroom."

"Um, yeah. About that…" Evan spoke up worriedly as he looked around them. "While you guys were talking, they kind of surrounded us."

The five were still covered by darkness, and so it wasn't easy to immediately make that observation the way Evan had managed. But Ford raised his lantern up above his head, expanding the radius of the light by a bit. At that moment, they were all able to see the several giant crushrooms that surrounded them.

Derrick looked around, noticing the crushrooms met the exact description Ford provided: mushrooms with giant fists instead of normal caps. "Yeah, they don't look like very  _fun-guis_."

"First off, funguis isn't plural, so that doesn't even work," Dipper corrected as he narrowed his eyes at Derrick. "Second, I hate you."

"I've been hating myself since I predicted what these things were."

The crushrooms continued to surround the five, however, they remained completely still, which sparked both fear and confusion in the gang.

"What're we going to do, Sixer?" Stan stiffly asked his brother.

"Make no sudden movements," Ford simply told them, remaining as motionless as possible. "They will not attack unless they feel the need to defend themselves."

As Ford said this, Stan caught something in the corner of his eye. Slowly turning his head in its direction, he managed to spot a much smaller purple crushroom below the much larger ones. Remembering that's what they were after, he very suddenly lifted his arm up to point over at it.

"Sixer, look! A purple crushro-"

_SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH_

Stan's sudden pointing triggered the crushrooms to enter their defensive mode, and they all began smashing the ground with their giant fist caps as hard and fast as they could. The gang was soon surrounded by dozens of giant, ground-smashing monsters that slowly moved around upon each hit of the cave floor.

"GRUNKLE STAN!" Dipper shouted, covering his head with his hands protectively.

"STANLEY!" Ford scolded.

"HOW THE HELL WAS THAT A SUDDEN MOVEMENT?!" Stan asked.

Derrick threw himself out of the way of an incoming crushroom before immediately rolling out of the smash radius of another one. "WHY DO THESE THINGS EXIST?!"

"Great Uncle Ford! What do we do?!" Dipper asked, panicking as he could find no means of escape.

Ford already had Meridian at the ready, trying to fend off the crushrooms with his laser function, firing away as fast as he could. The sheer size and amount of the crushrooms were too overbearing, however, and each shot barely did any reliable damage. "There's too many of them! We need to find some cover!"

Evan quickly glanced around the cave, managing to find a reachable narrow crevice within the cave walls that could fit them all for temporary cover.

"Over here!" he shouted as he ran over to it.

Everyone noticed where Evan was heading toward and immediately followed. Fitting themselves one by one into the narrow crevice, they maintained their positions as they barely had cover to protect themselves from the crushroom onslaught.

"I'll tell you one thing," Stan spoke up through his panting. "I think I'd prefer Bill giving me an aneurysm as opposed to death by fungi."

"I'll admit. I don't think I've ever encountered so many at once before," Ford said through his own panting. "Then again, it has been over thirty years since that last encounter. If there were no prior cave dwellers, then they've had plenty of time to regrow uninterrupted"

"So what's the plan now? Shoot them with ointment or something?" Derrick suggested.

"Not the same type of fungus, Derrick…" Dipper said with a facepalm.

"I never did well in life science, so…"

At that moment, one of the large crushrooms moved its way toward the crevice. While it was unable to reach the gang directly with its fist, it began smashing against the stone wall above them.

_SMASH SMASH SMASH_

Evan looked up, somewhat panicked. "There is no way we're getting out of here without getting crushed."

"I have something that might work," Ford said as he tapped various buttons on Meridian. "And by might, I mean there's about a twenty-five percent chance of it actually functioning properly."

"Real hopeful," Stan remarked sarcastically.

Ford tapped one last button, prompting Meridian to transform into various cyber and metal parts amongst his hand, slowly growing up his forearm. However, the growth stunted and there was a blaring noise coming from the base of where the watch fit on his wrist. A red light blinked at the same time and the exoskeleton parts began to retract back into Meridian's standard form.

"Gah! Dammit!" Ford shouted frustratedly.

"What happened?" Dipper asked, confused.

"My own stupidity," Ford said with a facepalm. "I installed a more creatively-inspired feature on Meridian that would allow me to utilize a cyborg exoskeleton armor of sorts with several built-in weapons and functions," he explained before tapping the watch. "However, as it turns out, complications with the internal design of the prototype watch just made the feature nearly unusable. It either doesn't work at all or it doesn't complete the destined full-body armor, leaving me with an arm or a hand. I could actually still work with the latter, though unfortunately, it appears we're stuck with the former."

"So we're stuck here?" Dipper questioned.

"I suppose so until either these crushrooms give up or we manage to figure out another escape plan," Ford said with a sigh. "All due to lackluster prototype design."

Evan curiously glanced back and forth between Ford and his watch. "Perhaps, I can take a look at it? I know a bit about internal tech design."

"I don't know, Evan," Ford shook his head, unsure. "It's a very intricate design using spare parts and tools from my multiverse expeditions. Not to question your intelligence, but I don't think it's your field."

"I mean, sure, I'm no watchmaker, but I did build my own computers from scratch," Evan brought up. "So from a technical side, I don't see what harm it would do for me to at least look."

"I'm not sure what you would find, but if you insist," Ford said as he unlocked Meridian from his wrist, tossing it over into Evan's hands.

Stan then aggressively grabbed Ford by the collar of his coat, whispering into his ear. " _You're letting a child mess with your interdimensional, toast-making, laser-firing wristwatch?_ "

"It's a flawed prototype, Stanley," Ford told him, pushing him back. "Even if Evan ruins it, it's not like I wasn't going to build another anyway."

"That's not my point. With all you have on that thing, what're the chances he taps something he shouldn't and blows us all up?"

"He's not going to blow us up, Stanley. It's not like I have bombs installed on it," Ford defended. However, his eyes then bulged as he thought about it. "Actually…"

Stan's eyes narrowed at him. "You have bombs installed on it, don't you…"

"No, but I do have an emergency self-destruct button."

Stan's eyes widened. "Emergency?!  _Self destruct button?!_ "

Not wanting to explain while also seeing his mistake, he pushed Stan to the side and approached Evan. "Hey, Evan, erm, apologies for interrupting so soon, but I think it's best that I have Meridian back now."

"Oh, no problem. I just finished anyway," Evan told him as he handed the watch back.

"Wait, finished?" Ford asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, I don't understand the multidimensional technology as you said, but the problem was actually the side panel, which seems to connect the multidimensional features to the watch itself," Evan explained. "It's built from normal earth steel, which appears to be weaker in comparison to...well...all the other unearthly parts being used. So I'm guessing because of that, the side panel is frequently loosened, which makes some of the features you attempt to access either unable to register completely or at all. So I just used the screwdriver for my glasses to tighten it up again."

Ford still held a confused expression but put the watch back on nonetheless. He pressed through the same variety of buttons he had before, eventually triggering the exoskeleton start up again.

Within seconds, metal and cyber parts circuited themselves up the entirety of his arm and amongst the rest of his body. A helmet was also formed around his head with a visor and holographic display in front of his left eye. Upon the armor's completion, Ford glanced down at his armored hand and smiled.

"Well, I'll be damned," he said in awe, clenching his fist. "You really did it, kid."

Evan smiled, whereas Dipper and Derrick displayed stupefied expressions as they stared at Ford's exoskeleton armor. As cool as either of them thought it was, it was by far Ford's most comic book-y design yet, and it even felt out of place in a sense. However, that still didn't take away from the fact that, again, it was  _really_  cool.

On the other hand, Stan didn't care enough to blink an eye. "Yeah, yeah. Kid's a bigger genius than Dipper," he brushed off carelessly, prompting an unnoticed look of indignation from Dipper himself. "Now, can you please kill those mushrooms?"

"Gladly," Ford nodded as he turned away, looking outside the crevice. "Alright. It's been a while since I used the complete exoskeleton. Let's see if I remember how it all works."

Without error, Ford activated a set of rocket boots that sent him flying at the crushrooms, which he began to engage and destroy one-by-one. As tough as the crushrooms were, they were no match for the detrimental punches received by Ford's armored fists, which had to have an enhancement for his strength, as he tore through them instantly. Ford wasn't out of shape for his age, but even then, he wasn't capable of such a punch with his own sheer strength. Not one that causes an entire crushroom to crumble to pieces.

After a good amount of lethal punches were thrown, Ford then aimed both of his arms forward and launched a barrage of miniature missiles at clusters of crushrooms. Despite their smaller size with condensed explosions, they were still incredibly effective, as the clusters practically disintegrated after each explosion. It also cleared out the crushrooms much faster than individual fly-by punches were doing.

Throughout the whole thing, Dipper watched in awe as his great uncle flew around like the lead of a superhero movie. Though, he felt more shock than he did awe, as he was still processing how Evan could've possibly managed to fix the watch in such a simple way that Ford himself spent so long trying to figure out.

After a solid minute, Ford had essentially eradicated every crushroom that had stood in their way and promptly landed back on the ground. Tapping a single button on his wrist prompted the armor to retract and reform back into Meridian's normal state. He had a wide, excited smile on his face as if he had just done something that he had always wanted to do.

He casually sighed. "Welp, the area is cleared. You can come out from there now," he said, gesturing for the others to come out of the crevice.

As everyone stepped out from the crevice one by one, Ford noticed the small, purple crushroom laying in mostly one piece on the ground. He picked it up by its dead fist and held it up or for the others to see.

"And it looks like we've gotten exactly what we've come here for."

Dipper was still processing his great uncle's crushroom onslaught a moment ago. "Great Uncle Ford, that was...amazing…"

Stan stood with a look that was half-annoyed and half-jealous, crossing his arms, not wanting to admit how cool he really thought it was. "I'm still not over how he put that and a toast-maker in his watch but not a map."

"Well, I'm not over how I could miss such an obvious design flaw in Meridian," Ford said as he looked at the watch. "I suppose my age really is starting to wear down on me. Nonetheless, I'm extremely grateful that Evan managed to find the problem and fix it."

"Granted, it'll likely loosen again at some point," Evan mentioned. "Though, if you're using stronger parts from other dimensions to make up the watch's main components, you may wanna consider keeping that consistency throughout the rest of the watch as well."

"A definite note I'll keep in mind in the future," Ford nodded. "But thank you, Evan. You have a gifted mind. And one highly adaptive to learning, I'm sure."

"Yeah, I guess I tend to learn fast," Evan shrugged. "I have no memory of it, but according to my mother, my first word came from reading the dictionary, and out of all the words I picked, I chose  _fractious_. I suppose it's either irony or my mother has a poor sense of humor."

Ford chuckled. "Well then, with all you've demonstrated of your swift problem-solving today and how quickly you were able to resolve Meridian's error, I'm considering the possibility of bringing you in for regular assistance in future lab and field endeavors, such as our current one, and perhaps, even helping me with my final design of Meridian when it comes time for it."

"Wait, seriously?" Evan and Dipper questioned at the same.

"Certainly. You've shown far more skill and critical thinking than I expected to see from you, even from what Dipper said about you," Ford told him. "Even thinking back to the statue incident earlier, which I had initially considered an act of foolishness, was actually a mistake made from lack of clear knowledge of the statue's capabilities. I'm an old-timer who, as you can see, is becoming increasingly vulnerable to mistakes too as I age. I think your young mind can do great things with what I can teach. Only thing is that I understand it may be something I'd need to talk over and work out with your parents, considering they don't have a clue who I am and why I'm trying to take their son out of their house every so often."

"No, they'll be cool with it!" Evan assured him. "Trust me, they  _want_  me out of the house! I normally hate leaving my room, but this has been the most fun I've had outside of it in years. I'd love to keep doing these types of missions and I'd love to help you design your watch. I'll admit, looking over the general internal structure already gave me some ideas for additions and improvements, but I decided to keep it to myself given the situation we were just in."

"Well, I'd love to hear them when this is all done and over with," Ford considered, lightly patting Evan on the back before walking back toward where they entered the cave from. "For now, let's all just make our way out of here and keep moving forward. We have one final destination left before we have all we need."

Dipper was thrown off by Ford's sudden offer to Evan though. Speedily, he walked up beside Ford, tugging the sleeve of his coat to halt him. "Hang on, Great Uncle Ford. You've never offered  _me_  to help out with Meridian. I've had some ideas of my own that I've been keeping to myself because you've said helping Stan was the priority."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Dipper. I wasn't entirely sure if you were into the concept. Must've just slipped my mind to ask, anyhow," Ford apologized. "But in any case, you  _are_ free to share whatever ideas you may have as well, but helping Stan  _still is_  the main priority"

"Doesn't really feel like it at the moment," Stan claimed subtly.

"Yeah, we need to move," Ford stated as Stan's negativity served as a reminder of their prior discussion about Bill's impending return. "And fair warning, this last anomaly we're after may not be quite as easy as what we've already faced so far."

"God, really?" Stan dreaded, rubbing the sides of his head agitatedly as he followed Ford out of the cave. "Hang on, I need a minute. I'm already going to get a migraine from the amount of nerd talk I've endured in the last two minutes."

The two continued on ahead with Evan following. However, Dipper remained behind in a state of disbelief as Derrick stood beside him.

"Welp. That kid's going places," Derrick claimed, breaking the ongoing silence.

Dipper's eyes lit up annoyedly. "Oh, and what? I'm not?" he said, challenging Derrick's implications. "Oh, yeah, Ford's gonna replace his own great nephew with some super smart and tech-savvy twelve-year-old that he just met. I tremble at the thought."

"I mean, why not?" Derrick questioned. "Didn't you once say he was trying to make you his apprentice when you were twelve? And that you two hardly knew each other for a few weeks at that point?"

"Well, I mean…"

"I mean, the dude's already ready to talk to the kid's parents so he can adventure more regularly with him. And assumes you aren't even interested in designing a super-watch?" Derrick continued, raising an eyebrow. "Yikes. If that isn't a warning…"

"It isn't!" Dipper cut off. "Dude, you're beating this thing into the ground. Ford's not going to replace me nor am I jealous of Evan! This is just you trying to be annoying. And for the record, it's  _working_."

"Annoying tends to be my fallback behavior when I haven't eaten," Derrick replied with narrow eyes, once again reminding Dipper about getting dragged along on their adventure before having a chance to eat. "Can't really help it."

"Well, you can shut it. This is one conspiracy theory that I don't wanna hear any more of."

"Alright, man. I'll cut it out," Derrick complied as he starting walking in the direction the others had already gone off. "But just know that whatever happens next isn't because of one of my 'conspiracies'."

Derrick walked out of Dipper's sight as he turned a corner of the cave heading back. Dipper stood in place for a few seconds in annoyance before following as well.

"God, sometimes I empathize with Mabel."

* * *

At the bike park, Mabel stood at the side of the bleachers as she watched Ryland walk out into the main set where Yuri was prepping for the next round. Hesitantly, Ryland looked back at her. However, she encouraged him by smiling widely and giving him a thumbs up, prompting him to continue despite his hesitations.

Ryland sighed with dread as he walked up behind Yuri, forcefully putting on a smile.

"Hey, Yuri."

Yuri turned around to face Ryland. He displayed a look of disinterest for a second before noticing the brightly colored bandage across the side of his face.

"Aw, how adorable!" he said with an amused chuckle. "Did your  _girlfriend_  give ya that bandage?"

"Uh...yeah, actually. She did," Ryland casually responded.

"Oh," Yuri replied, somewhat put off for a moment by Ryland's passive response. "Well, it looks  _stupid_. Which seems to suit ya perfectly given that stunt you messed up last round."

It took Ryland a moment to come up with a response that wasn't threatening and instead, gave into fake laughter.

" _Oh man!_  You're a  _good_ jokester, Yuri!" he cried out, pretending as if his insult was the funniest thing he had ever heard. " _WHEW!_  Quite the  _comedian!_ "

Yuri's eyes glanced around in slight confusion. "I...uh...don't know if you're capable of understanding this, but, that wasn't a joke. Ya  _really_  look as stupid as you are."

Even after his attempts at passiveness, Yuri's persistent mocking of Ryland was getting to him quick. His eyes twitched as he tried to hold himself together from completely losing it.

" _Be right back!_ "

Ryland then proceeded to walk back behind the side of the bleachers where Mabel stood. Having heard their conversation, she had an awaiting look, knowing Ryland was about to vent his struggles.

"Can I punch him now?" Ryland asked her calmly.

"Ryland, no."

"I'm gonna punch him."

"Ryland!"

"I swear I'm gonna punch him."

" _Ryland!_ "

"He's absolutely going to get punched."

"Ryland, please!"

"FINE!"

Ryland then forced himself to walk back up to Yuri from the bleachers, to which Mabel promptly stood on watch again. He took a deep breath as he approached Yuri, holding back his desperate want to nail Yuri in the face with his fist.

" _SO, Yuri!_ " he began, letting out most of the frustrated air he had breathed in. "You and I have been competing with one another for a few months now, and honestly, you're a pretty great BMX rider."

"Yeah, that's what the trophies are for."

" _...God, it's never easy with you is it?_ " Ryland questioned under his breath. "Ah, well, you know, I've been figuring for some time now that you've beaten me enough times to where you don't have anything left to prove. So I'm thinking we could just put this feud of our's aside and just embrace this whole competition as something just for fun instead of laughing at each other's...or... _my_  near-death experiences. Ya know?"

Yuri thought for a brief moment, still finding Ryland's passiveness very odd. "So, what you're suggesting is...I stop picking on ya because you're too much of a  _baby_ to handle it?"

"HEY, I AM  _NOT_ A BABY!" Ryland shouted in Yuri's face before immediately restraining himself, clenching his fists and trying to control his anger. He let out one last exasperated sigh before deciding just to just be upfront. "Dude, all I'm asking is that you stop giving me crap all the time. I've never done anything to you. I used to see you like friendly competition and you quickly turned that into...whatever it is we have now. Can't you grow up and stop treating this competition like you always have to prove something to me?"

Yuri's eyes narrowed at his reply. "Grow up, eh?"

"Uh...yeah," Ryland nodded, ensuring what he said was correct. " _Grow up._ "

Yuri's eyes continued to stare Ryland down with abhorrence for a moment. However, he suddenly grew a friendly smile as he cheerily patted Ryland's shoulder.

"Haha! Sure thing, bud," he chuckled. "It's about time I grew up anyway, right? Ah, silly me. Treating ya with no respect for so long for no reason. What was I thinking? I'll just get out of your way. You go on right ahead."

Ryland displayed a look of shock at Yuri's change of attitude, which sounded too convincing to be fake. "Wow, really? Huh, I thought you were going to continue being a jerk, but this works out fine too."

"Yeah, pal!" Yuri nodded as he began walking off with some of the tournament crew. "Good luck with the competition. I know you got this!"

"Uh...you too..." Ryland replied.

Ryland then walked back behind the side of the bleachers, meeting with Mabel, who was excitedly awaiting him, seeming to have already overheard them making amends.

"Wow, that turned out better than I expected," he admitted to her.

"You see? Mabel knows what she's talking about," she replied, pointing at herself in self-congratulatory fashion. "Rivalries are dumb. Surprisingly, he had enough sense to realize that."

"What about you and Derrick?" Ryland asked.

"That's one of those rare helpless cases," Mabel dismissed.

"I'll just have to take your word on that," Ryland shrugged. "But as far as Yuri goes, maybe now, the rest of the competition  _won't_  be terrible."

* * *

_CRASH!_

Ryland found himself sliding against the ground, coming from yet another unexpected bike crash halfway into his second-round run. He rolled over a few times until finding himself laying flat, his bike sliding further off across the course.

_ZZZZZZ!_

The crowd winced yet again as Ryland's crash. Concerned looks grew most particularly from Mabel and her friends as they watched, with Candy filming.

Ryland groaned as he sat back up. "What the hell happened there?! Again?"

Lone laughter was heard from behind Ryland, prompting him to look up. Above the course, he spotted Yuri looking down at him with an amused smirk. "Geez, Ryland. How many more times are you gonna crash before you paint the whole course with your blood?"

Ryland looked down at his body, feeling more pain from bruises than any cuts or scratches. However, looking down at his left leg, he spotted another deep scratch from which blood had dripped amongst the ground as he crashed. He hadn't felt any real pain from it until he noticed it, which prompted him to groan painfully as he got back on his feet.

With the competition still going on, the judges made their decision on Ryland's performance and promptly raised their scorecards up, unimpressed expressions across their faces.

5, 4, 5

"HA!" Yuri cackled humorously. "And just one point off from Ghost Eyes's score. For you, that's impressively bad."

"THEY KEEP GIVING ME SMALL BIKES!" Ghost-Eyes called out from the sideline bench, cut up and injured as well from his own performance in the second round before Ryland. "WHAT AM I?  _A TODDLER?!_ "

"Here you go, Ghost-Eyes," Gideon said as he walked up and sat on the bench with a plastic shopping bag in hand. "I bought you some band-aids for the scratches."

Ghost-Eyes crossed his arms and pouted as he turned away from Gideon. "They better be the ones with superheroes on them."

Less fussed about his score, Ryland climbed up and out of the course to confront Yuri face-to-face. "What's your deal, Yuri? I thought you said you'd cut it out!"

"Oh yeah. I said that, didn't I?" Yuri visibly recalled, tapping his chin with his finger. "Well, Ryland, there's no easier way to put it: I lied."

_WAM!_

At his breaking point, Ryland swung a fist against the right side of Yuri's jaw with enough force to send him falling to the ground. The crowd in the bleachers erupted in surprise as this happened. Ryland held no remorse for his action and simply stood over Yuri like a brute, internally asking himself whether one punch was enough.

"YES!  _VIOLENCE!_ " Grenda cheered from above. "Tell me you got that, Candy!"

"Yes, yes! I did!" Candy nodded giddily as she held her camera on the action below. "Replay value has increased exponentially!"

"Girls!" Mabel shouted, not quite as approving of the violence as they were.

"Oh, right. We should probably interfere and stuff," Grenda replied, somewhat disappointed.

At that moment, Mabel raced down the bleachers with the girls following behind her. As she reached the bottom, she hopped down and grabbed Ryland by his arms, trying to pull him back.

"Ryland!" she urged, trying to pull him away from the scene.

"I swore that I'd punch him!" Ryland reminded her, trying to resist her pull.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Reeds, but this competition doesn't approve of foul play," the announcer suddenly stepped in between him and Yuri. "I'm afraid we're going to have to disqualify you from the competition for your actions."

"Disqualify?  _Me?!_ " Ryland asked, eyes widening in disbelief.

"HA! Bad play,  _RyRy!_ " Yuri laughed as he rubbed his jaw, pointing his other finger at him.

Ryland's eyes narrowed angrily as he tried to pull himself out of Mabel's grasp to lunge at Yuri. " _Why...you-!_ "

"Come on!" Mabel shouted, using her full strength to hold Ryland back, beginning to drag him off away from the park.

Yuri was helped up by some crew as Ryland and the girls went off, out of sight. He wiped his mouth, which bled ever so slightly.

"God, in all my time hosting these competitions, never have I seen so much drama over a smoothie gift card grand prize," the announcer stated, shaking his head as he walked off.

* * *

Mabel dragged Ryland off to an open spot in the woods next to the bike park, out of sight from the crowd and other park crew. Candy and Grenda trailed behind them, looking out for any possible followers.

"Ryland, what were you thinking?" Mabel asked with an unimpressed look.

"Tell me he didn't deserve that!" Ryland defended.

"Look, he's not a likable guy, but…"

"Not likable?! Is that the most you can say about him?" Ryland asked, distraught by Mabel's apparent attempt to put down his actions. "He's a jerk! An asshole! Always has been! And there's no changing that!"

"I know! Okay?! I know!" Mabel admitted, turning away from him uncomfortably. "It's just...I thought you were better than that!"

"Mabel, I know to you, I'm 'the nice guy' because that's all you've ever seen from me. But playing nice isn't exactly how I prefer to go about dealing with those who mess with me or those I care about," Ryland told her. "I've kept myself together for months with this guy, and so he's had it coming."

"But what about making a scene out of it in front of all those people?"

Ryland sighed, getting himself to calm down a bit. "You think I care what those people think? No! I only care about what  _you_  think," he told her.

"Well, I think…" Mabel began before stopping herself, trying not to let herself come off as insincere. "...I just think you could've gone about that a bit better."

Ryland looked at her for a moment before letting out a sigh. He then sat down against the trunk of a nearby tree, thinking for a moment. "You're right. I could've. I'm sorry for that, but after all Yuri's put me through...well...all that anger was bound to come out at some point. And look what that cost me."

Mabel thought for a moment as she walked over and sat beside him with an understanding look. "I'm sorry about the competition, Ryland. But, I mean, there's always next time."

Ryland scoffed. "I doubt there'll even  _be_ a 'next time' after this. Even if there is, I couldn't even do it for fun knowing Yuri will be there just to ruin it all again."

"Yeah, I get it," Mabel admitted guiltily. "My fault for just looking through my usual hopeful glasses again."

"You're good," Ryland replied with a light chuckle.

There was a brief silence as everyone calmed down, letting go of the ongoing tension. Grenda and Candy had just awkwardly stood to the side as the couple vented out to one another. After a bit of time passed, Candy held up her camera and looked through all the footage she had recorded that day, letting out a disappointed sigh.

"Well, I guess I need to reconsider my film topic," she stated.

"Aw, I'm sorry this one didn't work out, Candy," Mabel apologized. "But at least you still have plenty of time to figure out a new one."

"You're right. It's not a big deal," Candy shrugged, still watching through the footage. "It just would've been more…" Her eyes bulged as she noticed something in her recording. "...convenient…"

"Yeah, I'm sure," Mabel nodded. "If only there was still a way we could get this all to work out."

"Magic…"

"You're right. It'd probably take something magical to solve this problem," Mabel agreed.

"No, no! Look at the footage!" Candy said as she frantically shoved the camera in Mabel's face. Grenda also jumped in behind Mabel to get a look of the video too.

The footage played before Mabel's eyes, which she was quickly determined was the end of the Ryland's first run as she saw him roll amongst the course. "Yeah, that's Ryland's first crash."

"Oh God, no. Nope. Absolutely not watching that again," Ryland cringed, not daring to look back at the footage himself.

"No. Look closely," Candy said as she rewound the footage before showing it to Mabel again in slow motion. "At the bike pedal."

Mabel and Grenda focused on the footage, paying close attention to Ryland's bike pedal as Candy said. Curiosity struck Ryland just enough to where even he pulled the camera a bit so he could watch. Right before his first crash, they all noticed a faint blue glow suddenly cover the pedal just before it slammed to the ground, resulting in the crash.

"Hang on...what the hell is that?" Ryland questioned as he began to think back to the moment himself. "I thought I felt something mess up on that side of my bike! I knew it couldn't have been a mistake on my part."

"Some sort of blue glow," Grenda noted curiously, raising an eyebrow.

"Maybe it's a lens flare or something," Mabel suggested.

"That's what I thought," Candy said as she fast forwarded the camera. "Until…"

Playing the video for the three again in slow-motion, Candy presented Ryland's second crash. As he rode in a straight line down the center of the course, his back wheel suddenly stopped rotating, which resulted in him flinging forward as he held onto his handlebars while he rolled.

"Woah, what?!" Ryland asked, completely bewildered as he looked on at how he crashed. "The hell happened to my back wheel?"

"Look! It has the same blue glow!" Candy pointed at the back wheel as she paused the footage.

The blue glow was apparent and to Mabel, it invoked a sense of déjà vu. "Huh...where have I seen that before?"

"That's not all," Candy rewound one more time before playing the footage for them again. "Focus on Yuri here."

The video now showed Yuri's first round. It appeared normal up until the moment he hit the ramp and flew into the air. Then, as Candy slowed the footage down, they were able to see a very noticeable blue glow form around Yuri's legs just as he flung them outward and held them perfectly.

"Look at his legs! The same blue glow!" Candy pointed out.

While the glow was apparent, Mabel's eyes directed toward Yuri's right hand gripped to his handlebar. It appeared the have some sort of string wrapped around it several times. However, a single necklace-like piece hung out from beneath, which flung around in the wind as he still managed to hold onto it.

"Hang on. What's he holding in his hand?" she asked.

" _Woah, look at Yuri go!_ " the announcer's voice was suddenly heard at that moment.

Everyone's attention redirected back to the bike park, to which they were able to catch Yuri as he did his second round stunts. Candy immediately put up her camera and pointed it directly at the course, filming. With the footage that she had already shown the others, they all had the instinct to look more closely at his performance for anything unnatural.

Yuri then proceeded to go up one of the ramps that were set up on course, beginning to perform a flip. However, for a split second, a blue glow was seen around his entire body that the gang was immediately able to make out. It was easier for them to make out considering they were actively looking for it rather than being unaware of it as they missed it prior.

"There it is again!" Ryland shouted, pointing him out. "You guys saw that right?! Didn't even need the footage to see that!"

Mabel's eyes had drawn back to his right hand, which she was able to notice had been wrapped in string again. The same attached necklace piece also flung out in the wind.

"He must be using something," Candy suggested as she filmed. "It just looks like magic."

"Magic?" Ryland questioned.

"Magic…" Mabel contemplated, the familiarity starting to settle in with her.

_ZZZZZZ!_

Yuri stopped his bike just as the timer blared. He received a large applause from the crowd, who he looked back at with a grin.

"Wow! What a  _magical_  run!" the announcer praised. "Yuri continues to amaze! And the judges…"

The judges briefly exchanged smiles with one another before raising their scorecards.

10, 10, 9

"...continue to agree! Give it up for Yuri!"

The crowd erupted into another large applause for Yuri.

"YURI! YURI!" they chanted.

Ryland watched from the distance, blood boiling with rage. "All this time, he's been cheating me and winning because of MAGIC?!"

"Hang on. I think I know what he's using," Mabel claimed.

Her eyes glanced over to the sidelines, spotting Gideon sat right beside Ghost-Eyes.

"...and I think I know who he got it from."

* * *

"I don't think I got any hope against Yuri in the competition, Gideon," Ghost-Eyes moped. "I'm was already in last place. How am I going to climb back against the best in the competition?"

"Well, in the end, all that matters is that you tried your best, Ghost-Eyes," Gideon tried to cheer him up. "The fact you made it to finals at all should be considered enough of an accomplishment."

"I guess," Ghost-Eyes accepted. "I still want to beat the everliving crap out of that announcer though."

"Well, uh, try to fight that urge," Gideon simply said. "Remember…"

"There's nothing greater than the power of friendship," the two said simultaneously.

"I'll try my best, Lil' Gideon," Ghost-Eyes said as he stood up from the bench. "But first, I'm gonna take this break to get a bike more suitable for me before they hand me a tricycle or something. I'll try not to steal it. And if I do, then I'll try not to assault the cashier," he promised as he walked off.

"Either way is progress, Ghost-Eyes!" Gideon called out with an encouraging smile. Immediately after, a hand grabbed onto the back of Gideon's collar and snatched him from around a corner. " _REEE!_ "

He was then pinned against a wall, to which he was faced aggressively by Mabel, with Candy, Grenda, and Ryland stood behind her.

"Gideon!" Mabel confronted.

"Ah, Mabel Pines and company!" Gideon smoothly greeted. However, his face then displayed confusion as he considered the circumstances. "Erm...what's up?"

"What are you up to, Gideon?" Mabel asked impatiently.

Gideon took a moment to think. "Well, I can't say I rightly know at the moment."

"Yuri Wyatts! You've been helping him cheat!" Grenda accused.

"What? I've been doing no such thing!" Gideon denied.

"Really?" Mabel asked, unconvinced. "Well, according to some footage that Candy shot of the event, it looks like some sort of magic or spell is being used to aid Yuri and sabotage Ryland! Kind of like that magic amulet you used against us years ago!"

Gideon began to sweat nervously. "Oh...a magic amulet, you say?"

"Talk," Mabel demanded, seeing they were onto him.

"Okay, okay!" he gave in. "Look, I haven't spoken with Yuri much, but he's always been a fine fellow to me. Sometime last year, I was trying to dispose of my old collection of spells, amulets, and other magical items that I had previously planned to use for an evil uprising. You know, back when I was  _that_  kind of kid. Anyway, Yuri came along and appeared interested in one my amulets, which he paid me for."

"He  _paid_  you?" Ryland questioned. "And you  _gave it to him?_ "

"I mean, yeah, that's how a purchase works, right?"

"But you went ahead and sold a magical amulet to him? Just like  _that?_ " Mabel asked further.

"I figured he just took interest in the appearance without knowledge of its power," Gideon explained, before leaning in and whispering. "You know how these locals are...pretending as if the apocalypse never happened and such."

"I can't believe you," Mabel asked, pushing him away from her. "You're just a sellout nowadays, aren't you? First, Nessman pays you to defame the Shack and you do it without even thinking about how it would negatively affect us. Now, you happily sell from your old collection of evil stuff without thinking about how someone else could possibly use them?"

"Alright, in retrospect, it was a bad idea on my part," he admitted, twirling his fingers guiltily. "But c'mon, y'all! This isn't like me and Nessman! I'm not helping Yuri with the competition. Everything he's doing with that amulet is on him! Sure, I may have sold it to him, but I mean, what were the odds that I ended up selling to someone who wanted to use it against someone related to you folk? I didn't even know about Ryland before this summer!"

Mabel processed Gideon's response, wanting to find a reason to argue back, but his intentions truly didn't seem harmful. The entire situation seemed like a matter of pure convenience. She then glanced back at the others for support, quickly realizing they all also had unsure expressions on their faces.

"I mean, he kind of has a point," Ryland admitted. "I never would've known about what a creep he was until you told me about him."

Mabel sighed as she turned back to Gideon. "Ugh. Alright, fine. I guess we believe you. But you're not going anywhere. You're going to help us figure out a way to snag that amulet away from him."

"I-I am?"

"You're the one on about wanting to gain our trust, right?" Mabel asked. "Well, here's your chance to do the right thing."

Gideon's eyes bulged, surprised that Mabel, if all people, was giving him an opportunity to further redeem himself. He simmered down his excitement and put on a serious face.

"Alright then."

* * *

Across the Gravity Falls valley, Ford led the others on a climb up against the side of one of the hanging cliffs. It was a very steep and rough climb, with everybody appearing somewhat roughed and dirtied up from events that transpired over the past hour or so. Soon enough, they reached a flat surface near the top of the cliff that had space for them to rest comfortably.

Ford threw himself forward as he climbed up onto the ledge. "Welp. That surely could've been a better journey up."

Stan, following right behind Ford, threw himself up beside him. "Yeah, I guess getting attacked by wolves isn't exactly something that one plans."

"Not even supernatural wolves either. Just normal wolves," Derrick added, his hoodie rugged even more than it usually was.

"I'm sure I wouldn't prefer supernatural wolves attacking us over normal wolves attacking," Dipper claimed as he watched his step on the cliff side.

"I mean, I wouldn't either. I'm not complaining," Derrick agreed. "Besides, normal wolves are cool."

"Well, if it hadn't been for Evan using his canned meat as a distraction, we may not have been able to get away as easily as we did," Ford said as he and Stan began helping the boys up.

"Why do you even have canned meat with you anyway?" Dipper questioned, looking back at Evan, who appeared the least roughened out of the five of them.

"I mean, the town's already had a history of one apocalypse, so I suppose it's just to be safe," Evan claimed.

"Ha! Ya see? That kid's a planner," Stan said, admiring Evan's thinking.

"Well, at least we've made it," Ford said as he turned around, facing another cavernous entrance in the cliff side. "Inside this cliff lies the hive of the scornets."

"So, uh, you wanna explain the name for this one or are we just going to find out when it's about to kill us?" Derrick asked, brushing himself off with his hands.

"Scornets are a supernatural species of giant hornets that just so happen to be incredibly scornful," Ford explained.

Derrick stared out into space for a moment. "I hate them already."

"Doesn't sound any different from normal hornets if I'm being honest," Stan claimed as he rubbed the back of his neck. "And I'd know. I ran Stan Co. Hornet Spray back in the day."

"And let me guess… it made them even angrier," Ford assumed.

" _Angrier?_  It was just water in a glorified spray can! It just pissed them off  _normally!_ "

"Well, let that be a learning experience. Splashing water on any creature will not gain its respect," Ford claimed as he walked toward the cavern entrance. "Now, c'mon. This is our last stop. If all goes well, we can finish before sunset."

As the others began to follow, Stan wrapped an arm around Derrick's shoulder and leaned into his ear to whisper, "Let those words be a lesson to you. If he ever says 'if all goes well,' chances are things aren't going to go well. I spent the past four years adventuring with the man."

"And I spent the past four years going to school with your great-nephew, who I can pretty much say the same thing about when it comes to the words, 'it'll probably work this time,'" Derrick replied.

"Ah, someone else who gets it," Stan said as he patted Derrick on the back at their understanding for one another. They shared a light laugh together as they continued following through the cave.

Although the two had been whispering, it was still loud enough for Dipper to easily overhear from behind them. Not that he cared, as he was already well aware of both of their stances. Instead, he placidly kept any comebacks to himself. Not that he was in the right mood for it anyway, as he had managed to bruise his knee pretty badly on their climb. It wasn't bad enough to make a fuss about, but the pain still forced him into a limp, which he had remained silent about the rest of the climb.

"You okay, Dipper?" Evan asked beside him.

"I'm fine," Dipper replied in a somewhat bitter tone.

"You're limping a bit there," Evan noticed. "I have first aid in my satchel if you need it."

"It's just a limp. I'll be fine," Dipper denied, his tone still resentful.

"If you say so," Evan shrugged off, taking his word for it. "But look, Dipper, I know I've already said it before, but I really want to thank you again for bringing me along. Being able to actually do something with all my knowledge of Gravity Falls anomalies just feels so rewarding."

"I'm sure it does," Dipper replied with a shrug.

"And your great uncle Stanford. Man, he's one of the coolest people I've ever met," Evan claimed. "So wise and smart, and now he wants me to actually  _work with him_  on even  _more_ adventures and projects! I mean, I didn't think I would be able to impress him  _that_  easily."

Dipper sighed. "Well, you can do a lot for your age. Someone as old as he is can see what kind of skill you have."

"Yeah, he mentioned that after spending the past few years adventuring with his brother, he feels he's getting too old for this type of adventuring," Evan brought up, which caught Dipper's attention. "Says perhaps he'll retire and end up teaching a young apprentice. And I was thinking how awesome it'd be if he offered that to me."

That statement caused Dipper to stop in place, eyes bulged in shock.

"Like, what twelve-year-old wouldn't take that, right?" Evan asked.

Dipper's shock quickly began to dissolve into anger, fists tightening as he listened to Evan go on.

"But Dipper, you're…"

"I'm what? A  _fool?_  A  _moron?_  An  _idiot?_ " Dipper snapped, turning toward Evan with a vexed expression. "For not taking his apprenticeship? You know what, maybe I am. Maybe I  _should've_  taken that apprenticeship. There are days that pass where I wonder what that life would've been like. A kid traveling the world with his awesome great uncle. Sounds amazing, doesn't it? I still wonder if I'd ever have that opportunity again. But I suppose that's just about off the table now because I invited a kid who's better with tech and knows more about anomalies than I do. Learned everything he knows from the comfort of his own room. Guess that's  _my_  fault for being selfless. That's usually what costs me these opportunities anyway. I could've been selfish and not have invited you at all. Maybe then, Ford would still see something valuable in me instead of putting me aside and considering recruitment of another twelve-year-old who isn't even family. So you're right, Evan. Whether a fool, moron, idiot, or all of the above, you're right. I'm all of those things."

After a moment of silence, Dipper was only just starting to process everything he had just vented out to Evan, realizing he had just let himself go without thinking. He was unsure whether to feel like he was in the right to have said what he did or whether he had just done something really stupid. Judging by Evan's mixed look of confusion and sorrow, he was leaning toward the latter.

Evan paused for a moment. " _Lucky_. I was trying to say you're  _lucky_ , Dipper. Not a fool, moron, or idiot. You're lucky to have Ford as a great uncle. He's been going on about how great and smart you are and how you're so much like him when he was a kid. He even said that you declined his apprenticeship years ago, but that it'll always be an option because you're family and he wants to pass on his greatest knowledge of anomalies to the person he can trust most with it. And you're lucky to have a figure like that who sees you with such value. My parents, they call me smart, but they would rather I invest my skills in a normal job like tech support or internet security than hunting anomalies. I may have just met him today, but Ford is the kind of person I want to grow up to be. And I'm sure he's what you want to be or wanted to be at some point too, and so you're just lucky to have someone so closely related to you be so supportive of that."

As Dipper listened on, the guilt came rushing in on him. He suddenly knew that he was the real villain. The real threat. Scolding an innocent child with innocent ambitions and dreams. Evan was like him, and it was almost like scolding his twelve-year-old self simply for being his twelve-year-old self. It was unfair, unjust, and unlike him to act such a way.

Evan sighed sadly. "The last thing I wanted to do today was make you or anyone else feel bad. Or even make you feel like I'm replacing you, for that matter. You're right. He's  _your_  great uncle in the end, so it's probably best I keep my distance," he claimed as he began walking back down with his satchel. He looked back once more with nothing but sorrow, crushed dreams in his eyes. "I'm sorry for the trouble, Dipper."

Dipper was left open-mouthed, mind racing with guilty thoughts as he tried to make out apologetic words with his agape mouth. He held his arm out desperately. "W-wait...Evan…"

He couldn't stop him though. Evan continued glumly making his way back down the mountain, bailing on the adventure. Dipper was left to simply stare on with a face of pure guilt for what he knew was the stupidest possible actions, perhaps, of his entire life.

"Oh man," he said with a regretful facepalm. "What have I done?"

It  _was_ the latter.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. It's been a while.
> 
> I've already done this song and dance for too many chapters already, so to sum up my absence: college, getting sick, and another reason I think I'll wait to confess when I finish this episode next part. But here I am, after all this time, still dedicated to working on this story.
> 
> Anyways, lots going on. There was violence, there was a bit of arguing, there was child scolding, there was Ford kicking ass in an exoskeleton armored suit - what else could be better?
> 
>  
> 
> Anyway, this chapter still goes over 10k words, but ever so slightly. I'm trying to learn how to conserve word count a bit and I'm doing so by making chapters more dialogue focused. This chapter is the first example of that effort, so let me know if it works out for y'all or if the extra info and character thoughts I typically added in prior chapters made the storytelling better.
> 
> Anyhow, I'll finally wrap this episode up next chapter. Not gonna promise how long that'll take to finish, but just know I'm still trying as hard as I can.
> 
> If you're still reading, thank you for your patience and thank you for sticking around.
> 
> Until next time.
> 
> -Absolute Rift


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